This Group is Giving Away Art Robots to Public Schools

Giving kids automated tools can unlock new creative impulses.

PaintBots

The Conru Foundation wants to get kids hooked on high-tech art.

Andrew Conru, the Robot Art Competition’s founder and organizer, told Futurism last week that his organization will award 40 public schools with free, easily-programmed robots that can grab paintbrushes and create portraits, landscapes, and other computer-aided designs.

 

2D Printer

The device looks sort of like a 3D printer. A robotic arm hangs and rapidly glides around above a blank canvas, darting about in three dimensions as it paints precise images, then cleans and swaps out its paintbrushes to start over with a new color.

Schools that apply for a robot can download the drawing software for free and will also get tips on how to program the bot to draw specific images.

Ultimately, Conru hopes that students will be inspired to create their own works of robot-assisted art and enter the 2019 Robot Art Competition to try for some of the cash prizes awarded to creative projects that use innovative techniques like machine learning-generated images or abstract recreations of existing paintings.

READ MORE: Get a painting robot today (for free!) [RobotArt.org]

More on the RobotArt competition: Qbits for Cubists: Robots Made These Incredible Works of Fine Art