Artistic Robotic Painting Using the Palette Knife Technique

This paper presents a novel robotic painting system able to create artworks using the palette knife technique. The implementation of this method with a robotic system is particularly challenging, since the robot needs to precisely manipulate the palette knife to pick up and release the color on the canvas. The painting system comprises a 6-DOF collaborative robot, a camera to acquire the information on the color position, and several algorithms for the artistic rendering of the images and for the planning of the trajectories that the robot has to follow. During the painting process the user can modify multiple parameters: both software, for example, stroke position and orientation, and hardware, for example, palette knife inclination and height, to obtain different stroke effects. Finally, the experimental results are discussed by analyzing the artworks painted by the novel robotic system.