Robotic Light Painting

A creative way of exploring 3D space

During my spring semester in graduate school at UT Austin School of Architecture, I developed a fun application for our KUKA KR60 robotic arms. First, I designed a simple shape in Rhino that I wanted the robot to trace out. Second, I used the KUKA|PRC plugin to create the .SRC file for the robot to run. Next, I placed a DSLR camera was set up on a tripod to capture the motion. Finally, a stick with an LED was mounted to the end of the robot. As the robot traced the image, it would turn the LED on and off as needed to recreate the shape that was originally modeled. Some post-processing was done in photoshop as well.

Approachable methods for teaching robotics in architecture

One of my passions is teaching digital fabricaiton. It can be difficult to find fun projects to do with students on large robotic arms, given their high learning curves. Long-exposure light painting, however, is a fun way of getting students use to epxloring 3D space with 6 DOF arms and translating model space into world space.

Future exploration

There are a few ways that I think this method could be improved and expanded upon in the future. First, I think it would be interesting to utilize the full space around the robot, instead of just in front of the robot like in the examples I created. Second, I think a color-changing LED could be used to create a very cool multi-color drawing effect. Lastly, I think more tinkering can be done with the exact settings of the DSLR to achieve the optimal affect.