Disney Research
Disney Research

RobotSculptor: Artist-Directed Robotic Sculpting of Clay

We present an interactive design system that allows users to create sculpting styles and fabricate clay models using a standard 6-axisrobot arm.

  • November 5, 2020
  • Symposium on Computational Fabrication 2020

Authors

  • Zhao Ma (DRZ/ETH Zurich)
  • Simon Duenser (ETH Zurich)
  • Christian Schumacher Disney Research
  • Romana Rust (ETH Zurich)
  • Moritz Bächer Disney Research
  • Fabio Gramazio
  • Matthias Kohler (ETH Zurich)
  • Stelian Coros (ETH Zurich)

Abstract

We present an interactive design system that allows users to create sculpting styles over and fabricate clay models using a standard 6-axis robot arm. Given a general mesh as input, the user iteratively selects sub-area of the mesh through decomposition and embeds the design expression into an initial set of toolpaths by modifying a set of key parameters that affects the visual appearance of the sculpted surface finish. These parameters are identified and extracted through a set of designed experiments using a customized loop tool interacted with the water-based clay material and are exposed to the user in an interactive user interface we developed. The initialized toolpaths are fed into the optimization component of our system afterwards for optimal path planning, aiming to find the robotic sculpting motions that match the target surface, maintain the design expression, and resolve collision and reachability issues. Using a customized loop tool, we demonstrate the versatility of our approach by designing and fabricating different sculpting styles over a wide range of clay models.

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