WORM collaborative robots automate art in a new way

In the world of machining, there are manual tools and then there are CNC tools. But there is also an option that exists between those two extremes, called “conversational programming.” That lets operators create complex programs by extrapolating from something simple, such as a radial pattern of a milled pocket. These WORM collaborative robots from researchers at UC Santa Barbara do something similar, but for artistic endeavors from painting to clay sculpting.

Imagine that your job is to carve thousands of tiny decorative marks into the surface of a clay. That is incredibly time consuming and repetitive, but it is also really difficult to program a robot for the task — each mark requires dexterity and movement in several axes. That’s where the WORM system comes in: it lets an artisan move a collaborative robot by hand to “teach” the complicated action (carving the mark), then tell the robot to repeat that action according to parameters (rotate the work around the Z axis by five degrees between marks, for example).

WORM (Workflow-Oriented Robotic Manufacturing) isn’t a specific robot, but rather a system for building such art-oriented collaborative robots. That system is built primarily on the training interface and craft-specific controllers paired with associated end effectors.

A demonstration robot built for painting has dual handles the operator can use to move a paintbrush and guide the robot during training. The operator can then tell the robot how to proceed, such as by repeating the movement around an axis or along a path.

The WORM team built that control interface around an Arduino Nano board, with a joystick and switch for interaction and an LCD screen to provide status information. The Arduino communicates over serial with a Python-based desktop application that controls the robot — a Universal Robotic UR10e cobot arm. 

This method of training robots has a lot of potential, as it doesn’t require technical expertise and helps maintain the link between artisan and art.