Robots do come in all shapes and sizes, performing tasks impeccably (including playing and winning at Texas hold ’em poker), but this particular one would actually be able to draw doodles on a beach – and I am not referring to tiny drawings, but rather, huge ones which could very well be the sandy version of crop circles – sorta. Known as the Beach Bot, it will recreate what you have come up with on the app that is connected to the Beach Bot. The app itself will run on your smartphone or tablet, and this particular collaboration between app and robot is made possible thanks to the efforts of computer vision researcher at Disney Research Zurich.
The Beach Bot will get about on wheels in sand, where it will scrape a line in its path with a rake in order to deliver the result intended. Normally, the Beach Bot would require something to the tune of 10 minutes in order to come up with a translation of your digital masterpiece on sand. Paul Beardsley and colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology were the ones behind this unique system, and there are further plans to upgrade the Beach Bot even further so that it can come up with a range of textures, and at the same time get rid of previous markings. Check out the created pictures of the Lion King, Nemo and Mickey Mouse in the video above, and be amazed.
Of course, this is not the first art-centric robot that we have seen – as some as far back in 2007 were already capable of plotting out portraits on a sheet of paper.