Robotic Experiments

On the 23rd March I worked with Lynn from the DMaF Lab to program the Kuka robotic arm to replicate my ink studies. My intention was to use the precision of the robotic arm to help reduce the human error factor in my studies, and hopefully produce more replicable results.

The first challenge was that the robot could only hold one paintbrush, so while we successfully programmed it to dip ink, I still had to manually apply the sufectant which meant that human error was still a factor. The robotic process was also quite slow, and with a high fail-rate of properly capturing the print with rice paper each time, this resulted in very few paintings by the end.

Manually adding the surfectant in between the robotic ink - dips. The robot dipping ink into the tray. It was difficult to calibrate the position of the paintbrush to exactly touch the surface of the water, but once it was properly calibrated it worked perfectly.

Reinking the paint brush

The robot in action