The artist robot: A robot drawing like a human artist

Abstract

An artist robot that draws portraits like a human artist is presented in this paper. This application concerns entertainement; it was developed at the PPRIME Institute in the ROBIOSS team and a patent [1] was deposited for this invention in 2007. The Artist Robot was installed in 2006 in the Futuroscope Park in France : the “artist robot” draws every day the portraits of the visitors by using a camera and a pen attached to end-effector. It has been developed first in the context of a collaboration with the Futuroscope Park. A second version of the “artist robot” was designed for being used in international shows or exhibitions. Because of the “human like” behavior, the artist robot meets a real success with the public and its ability to reproduce a human portrait by using in the same time robot motion control and image processing provides realistic result for the portrait rendering. Based on the specifications, the whole application is detailed. The robot and its environment are described; and sofware engineering and image processing are discussed. Finally results illustrate the efficiency and the success of the Artist Robot; and an analysis of how the task is carried out is provided.