Monday, October 22, 2012
Calligraphy robot mimics the brush strokes of a master artist
DVICE: Creating beautiful Japanese calligraphy is an art that requires years of practice to master, but what if a robot could mimic the exact hand movements of the artist, churning out masterpieces like a photocopy machine? That's the idea behind the Motion Copy System, developed by researchers at Keio University in Tokyo.
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17 comments:
Wow, this is pretty amazing. Its so crazy how many uses there are for technology these days. This robot has so much potential. It seems like it would be great for teaching like it mentioned, espicailly if they found a way where someone could hold the top part of the handle while the robot guided there hand. This could also be adapted to the theatre for scenic painting. If a painter had a lot of repetitive work to do, such as flooring or bricks, perhaps they could do one example piece and the robot could replete the rest. Im sure there would be challenges like changing colors and things but that seems easier than painting 300 identical things. Also it wouldnt even put them out of a job because they would still be needed for all other detail work that wasnt repetitive, and would save the show money from having to pay for overtime.
April brings up many good points. The repaid biliary of this I'd pretty amazing. I feel like the pressure,force, and speed of the system is something that I feel could have come out years ago. I wonder why it took someone till now to make a calligraphy machine that actually replicates someone exactly. What took them so long or why did they choose to just make a machine with almost perfect replication? Seeing the teaching capabilities would be something I think this could have potential for.
Being at Carnegie Mellon, I love robots (probably not as much as Ruben though) and i think it is really cool when people fuse math, science, and art because it really is the way of the future. I agree with April in that i believe this robots has a lot of potential. Large scale scenery could be painted more easily. Also there is a certain quality that hand painted scenery has, but there is a convenience in using technology for as many purposes as possible in the tech theatre world. The Robot seems to be a good blend of the two.
I have been working in robotics for a few years now, and if there is one thing I have learned, it is that humans are nigh on impossible to recreate without building real human parts. Technology is slowly becoming more advanced, but it's still hard. The hardest part of recreating humans mechanically is the hands, specifically hand-motor skills. The fact that a CNC-type machine is able to recreate Japanese calligraphy, a very fine-skilled art. As for theatre, this could make calligraphy in scenes easily obtainable, especially on a large scale. Technology certainly has come very far! I do want to point out the connection between this and the 3D printer shop article earlier in this blog.
This is a fascinating article. Replicating human movements through animatronic means has been long perused. Robot Abraham Lincoln at Disneyland was just the beginning. I do not think the point here is to recreate the artist work on a mass scale. Andy Warhol mastered that in the 60’s between lines of coke. And before that there was the AUTO pen which mechanically reproduces signatures. I like the input mechanism of this deal but there is no means of tilt/pitch. Unless calligraphy is a purely vertical XY motion it will need that tilt. AND it will need a means of determining how much ink is in the brush and what the stroke is looking like. That is what the artist is doing. They will need to remedy this before Data can learn to play the violin.
As everyone has said the replication of human motion through robotic means has long been sought after. Even before advanced robotic technology people were writing science fiction about humanoid robots. I'm sure calligraphy wasn't what science fiction writers had in mind for advanced robots but this is still impressive work. Calligraphy requires careful, precise, and fluid motion. All of which were at one point incredibly difficult to produce in robots. It's always good to see technology continuing to make advances.
Replicating the human hand movement........... one more step toward Skynet.
At first I was like, "Leave it up to Japan to spend probably millions of dollars on a fancy calligraphy robot" and then I was like, "Way cool!" and then I was like, "When you think about it, it's just recording movements..." and then I stayed on that thought. I mean, Yeah! imitating brush strokes is SO COOL, but all it's really doing is repeating the movements the artist made. It's not really that different than recording a voice or recording myself typing or playing the piano on a fancy piece of equipment that will then repeat what I typed or those self-player pianos. It's more complicated because there are more variables, depth, pressure, etc, but I don't see this as intensely innovative technology.
After reading everyone's comments, I want to play the devil's advocate a little bit. Yes, this technology is cool and a robot mimicking human hand movement enough to recreate calligraphy exactly sounds like a good idea. However, when people above were talking about how this could be applied to theatre and scenic painting, and it relieves the scenic artist of having to paint 300 bricks, no one mentioned (except the article, obliquely), the fact that the robot would relieve the scenic artist of their job. Sure, maybe an artist would be brought in for some small detail work, but that would cut down their hours from 40 to 4 per week, which is not sustainable as a career.
If this kind of technology ever did start being introduced to theatre on a bigger scale, unions would have a HUGE issue with them. Sure, we have lots of machines in the shops that make the jobs easier, but they don't eliminate the jobs all together. Taking this calligraphy technology further, a database of art, textures, images, etc could be created which would mean a designer would just have to pick out exactly what they wanted, and the robot could create it on the set. Cool, but also kind of scary for scenic painters' jobs.
Though I agree with Cat that any machine that destroys a job is not good, I don't think that is a good enough reason to stop innovation. Should we not have invented the digital camera because it put film developers out of business? The bottom line is that sometimes innovation leads to job displacement, but from the ashes come new jobs, sometimes betters jobs, that push the overall project to a new and exciting place. I think we should be embracing innovation like this and I look forward to it reaching a price point where it is accessible to theatre.
I dont think it necessarily has to eliminate that persons job, but is just a new tool they will have to master and a new skill they have to learn. Its not like this will happen immediately and when it does it will still be expensive. As far as unions go, if this did happen and hours were cut down, can't they have a rule about the minimum requirement of a call with in reason, like IATSE?
After just having worked on copy a painting for many hours, I can't help but wish I had something like this.
I'm very interested in robotics. This is an interesting concept for an unusual robot. Often when we think about robots all we see in our minds eye is robo cop, but it's important to remember that robots come in all shapes and sizes.
In high school I took Chinese for three years and one of the tasks I always struggled with was inputting Characters in to the computer. A devise like this one could be used for fast input of complex languages like Chinese.
I'm very exited to see where this technology leads next.
The fact that people were able to mechanize the exact styling of someone's writing is fantastic. This could come in handy for so many art work pieces. I see it as a more personalized printing station. Like many have said before me, this would totally be perfect for a scenic artist. Getting repetition down to a science can make someones job just so much easier. This is such a great way to innovate the way we look at printing nowadays and see how simple things like this can change it for the better.
This is cool, but for me its only because they say it is for educational purposes. If the purpose was to simply reproduce the art this would be less impressive, a printer can mimic thickness of lines. I am impressed by the technology the ability to capture force and momentum is a cool one, just not so much at the applications. the reason it make sense to me as an educational tool is because if you can find a good way to explain to a human the force that was done originally, it does make for a unique teaching tool. I wonder if there are any other applications of this though?
Personally I am rather angry that a robot learned how to do calligraphy before I did, That's so cool. It seems that we have basically gotten to the point where we can create robotic arms that mimic and move and can do the same things human arms can do. If we can just keep building this one appendage at a time, I'm sure we could have a working Terminator by 2015! How exciting!
Wow pretty cool! As the video narrator mentioned, this allows very complex, intrinsic skills to be replicated in a very neat and authentic way. I think what April said is really interesting too, if the robot could be manipulated so that it would teach a person how to draw these characters, that would be very cool as well. Of course the notion of having the ability to copy a hand-painted work can be frightening, but I think it is important to keep in mind what the article says, "that a similar argument was made by musicians when Edison introduced the phonograph." It all depends on your point of view, the use of the technology, and what the finished product will be used for. Here, preserving a complex, ancient art seems very good.
It is cool to see how another robot came out. Just last week, I read an article about 3D printer and now here is calligraphy robot. Looking at this video, I felt like technology has been constantly developing. However, I also doubt that we try to replace everyday life to robot when we can definitely write calligraphy by ourselves. I mean it is good how now robot can replicate bunch of calligraphy without any labor put into. Also, it is still amazing how it can control the strength of strokes and sense the motion to follow what is being written. i am curious enough to explore more potentiality this robot has.
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