Disney Develops a Robot That Can Sculpt Clay!
Robots have been developed over the years that have taken over all kinds of manufacturing jobs. Now, Disney has developed a robot that can actually sculpt clay! This is pretty crazy as we humans have held a strong lead in creative endeavors like this, but, of course, leave it to Disney to want to replace human artists with robots.
Here’s a note that came along with the video that shows off RobotSculptor, that was shared by Disney Research Hub:
We present an interactive design system that allows users to create sculpting styles and fabricate clay models using a standard 6-axis robot arm. Given a general mesh as input, the user iteratively selects sub-areas of the mesh through decomposition and embeds the design expression into an initial set of toolpaths by modifying key parameters that affect the visual appearance of the sculpted surface finish.
These parameters were identified and extracted through a series of design experiments, using a customized loop tool to cut the water-based clay material. The initialized toolpaths are fed into the optimization component of our system afterwards for optimal path planning, aiming to find the robotic sculpting motions that match the target surface, maintaining the design expression, and resolving collisions and reachability issues.
We demonstrate the versatility of our approach by designing and fabricating different sculpting styles over a wide range of clay models.
There’s still a long way to go with this kind of technology because the robot lacks any kind of creativity, but that could all change with an artificial intelligence application. Check it out below, and let us know what you think.