The paper on NAVER LABS’ drawing robot ARTO-1 received the Best Paper Award at IROS 2022 (IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems).
ARTO-1 is a robot that learns humans’ capabilities to create brushstrokes. Like humans, the robot can freely adjust the force, speed, and angle of the pen to draw pictures on a tablet PC. This is made possible using bilateral haptic technology that allows precise force control, the cloud brain that combines thousands of movements and delivers commands, and robot hardware that enables sophisticated manipulation. Furthermore, since ARTO-1’s learning continues even at this very moment, its drawing ability progresses every day.
"Robot Learning to Paint from Demonstrations," written by ARTO-1 developers Younghyo Park, Seunghoon Jeon*, and Taeyoon Lee won the IROS Best Entertainment and Amusement Paper Award. The paper was highly praised for the original idea of attempting to educate robots on human drawing techniques and for its differentiated methodology.
ARTO-1 is currently on display on the second floor of NAVER’s 1784 building. It certainly is charming and captivates people’s attention, in addition to its technological excellence. This is probably due to the intrinsic nature of drawing; it is an ability unique to humans, a form of art, and fundamentally, a type of play for humans. Observing how robots learn what we previously thought to be exclusively human is a unique experience that invokes many different feelings. We will continue to deliver this exciting journey of ARTO-1—how much further it will improve and how this research will affect other robot projects.
*Former: NAVER LABS intern / Current: KAIST graduate student