A robot installation developed by artists in the Robotlab at the Center for Art and Media ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany - some of whom are now employed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, System Technologies, and Image Exploitation IOSB - successfully sketches human portraits. “We have used an image-evaluation process that essentially equips the robot with the sense of sight,” explains Martina Richter, a scientist at IOSB. “There is a camera mounted on the robot’s arm that it uses first to take the person’s picture.” Edge-processing software seeks out the contrasts in the image and translates these to robot coordinates - to movements of the robot’s arm. The robot uses a pencil to trace a portrait of the individual on its easy, and after about ten minutes, it grabs the work and displays it.
The robot’s everyday routine is less artistic, however. Ordinarily, researchers at IOSB use it to analyze the optical reflection properties of various materials. They shine light on an object - a reflector of the kind mounted on children’s backpacks, for example - from various directions. The robot’s arm circles the material sample in a hemispheric pattern, measuring how the object reflects light. This helps design objects such as reflectors so that they return light in the most bundled way possible to the direction from which it comes – to a car driver, for example. Then the reflector emits a bright flash that draws the driver’s attention to the child. The objective is different when it comes to paint effects on a car’s own surface - the aim there is to display different hues to the observer depending on the direction of view.
