Industrial robots have been used in a variety of applications and in this era are being used as a tool an artist’s assistant to create art.
What is interesting today is that manufacturers of robotic arms have discovered so many methods that provide flexibility to applications, that the work of an artist is much easier. We have multi-purpose robots with degrees of freedom ranging from 3 to 6.7 and more. Movement planning is important, as it makes working with the robotic arm easier. Allowing subtle rotations with precision when making paintings and sculptures
Artists are constantly evolving, looking for new creative forms, looking for inspiration in the current, but the current is to integrate new technologies. This is the case of Luxo, a robot invented to draw a painting with light superimposed. Inspired by the painting of Marcel Duchamp, Luxo represents the dynamism of a luminous particle in a three-dimensional space.
The Korean design firm Everyware has made a wooden robot arm that is computer-programmable to create beautiful 3D light paintings.
This system is composed of a small LED bulb mounted on the tip of a custom-made 4-degree of freedom robot arm, and Luxo can freely move its light source in a space by drawing mind-boggling lines of light through long exposure photographs.
Using one photograph, the robot creates several sets of light paintings. All photos were designed and simulated before taking a real one through a custom trajectory calculator software created by the designers of Everyware Hyunwoo Bang and Yunsil Heo.
How the Luxo? system works. The movement of Luxo is based on a pre-choreographed path. At the tip of the robot arm there is a colored LED. When the device starts dancing and the LED flashes and changes color, a camera captures the movement.
The robot, turns and shakes the arm to paint 3D light paintings that look like fireworks stripes. It ends its circular dance by drawing an abstract figure in the form of a whirlpool.
The designers of the Everyware studio said they were more interested in how photos leave traces on an imagined surface.
These dazzling light sculptures designed by a robot with features as simple as Luxo, demonstrate that technological advances will lead to discoveries that will allow artists to create works with totally unlimited concepts.