When I first built my painting robot, I looked to previous painting robots for inspiration. After all, there are plenty of robotic arms applying spray paint on factory floors. But for some reason they appeared too heartless for me, too mass produced. I wanted something that I could build myself.
As inefficient as it sounds, I wanted my robot to paint with artist paints and brushes. Furthermore, I wanted it to paint on the flat surface of a stretched canvas. Most existing robots paint on a roller which moves the surface in a single direction. Think of your printer. Contrary to this, I wanted the ability to make multiple passes on wet paint. In my search, I realized that the robot I wanted did not exist.
Above is the first step I took toward making my painting robot, Zanelle. It is a robotic head I built to lift and drop a brush. It was little more than a rickety piece of wood with a hand wound electromagnet. The hinge was banged out of scrap metal and due to the weakness of the electromagnet, I had to put counter weights opposite the brush to balance it. It looked and worked horribly, but at least it worked. So I had my robotic head.
The next thing I set about building was a table to move this robotic head around. Stay tuned for the next post where I describe the table I mounted my first robotic head on. I will also shortly be featuring a brief history of robotic heads that my robot, Zanelle, uses.
