A robotic painting system called “CloudPainter” has won the 2018 art competition run by RobotArt.org.
Judges say CloudPainter was “able to paint evocative portraits with varying degrees of abstraction”.
The CloudPainter system was created by an independent artist from the US, called Pindar Van Arman. (See video below.)
Van Arman, who works from a studio with collaborators, appears to use a range of relatively low-cost robotic arms which are connected to a network of computers.
The key component of the system is the software, which features artificial intelligence algorithms, which seem to have been made available online.
Van Arman says: “My first machines were plotter printers that simply dipped a brush in paint and dragged it from point to point.
“My most recent robotic arms, however, use feedback loops, artificial intelligence, and deep learning to operate at the cutting edge of computational creativity.”
Robot Art has made the not-insignificant sum of $100,000 available in prize money for the competition, and CloudPainter was awarded $40,000 for being the winner.
The full list of winners published by Robot Art, along with the prize money they won, are as follows:
- 1st Place – $40,000 CloudPainter – Independent (USA)
- 2nd Place – $25,000 – PIX18 / Creative Machines Lab – Columbia Univeristy (USA)
- 3rd Place – $10,000 – CMIT ReART – Kasetsart University (Thailand)
- 4th Place $6,000 – Late Night Projects – Independent
- 5th Place $5,000 – Joanne Hastie – Independent (Canada)
- 6th Place $2,000 – Jeremy Kraybill – Independent (Australia)
- 7th Place $2,000 – BABOT – Massachussetts Institute of Technology (USA)
- 8th Place $2,000 – Ozpainter (Australia)
- 9th Place $2,000 – CARP Worcester Polytechnic Institute (USA)
- 10th Place $2,000 – Portrait Painter Robot Project – Independent (Spain) (main picture in this article)
Honorable mentions were given to:
- A Roboto – Data Science Lab (Japan)
- Busker Robot – University of Udine (Italy)
- HH Drone Party – Hisperia High School
- RoboLions – University of Sydney (Australia)
