When Art Marries Robotics to Create Mosaics
Creating and installing an artistic tile mosaic typically involves an enormous amount of human labor. A laborer must find tiles of the right size, make sure they are free of defects, and assemble them according to the artist’s design.
A Boston-based mosaics creator called Artaic is making the process more efficient by utilizing imaging software and pick-and-place robots to quickly and easily lay out tiles in the correct order. Artaic has not only developed technology to beautify buildings far more easily than traditional tile mosaic approaches but has also shown how robots can be improved to fulfill a specialized purpose.
Since 2007, Artaic has been steadily adding to its robot’s capabilities. It now uses different parts that allow tiles to be placed more quickly and in less time. Founder and CEO Ted Acworth says that Artaic overcame challenges by taking big risks, like adopting new procedures for feeding tile.
Today, the robot that places the tiles, Artemis, utilizes a two-axis gantry, a moveable structure that sits over the placement area, with multiple pick heads. The gantry allows Artemis to transport multiple tiles in one trip between the tile feeder and the grid, reducing the number of times it must travel between picking and placing tiles. Previously, Artemis employed an industrial robot arm to set down the tiles one by one.
Artaic’s prior system for feeding tiles to Artemis involved loading rectangular tubes with the tiles right-side up. This took more time and required more work from the craftsperson. Now, Artemis allows the craftsperson to fill different hoppers with each color of tile. The robot detects the tiles’ orientations as they are fed through.
Artaic continues to search for further improvements that can be made to orientation, precision, feed rate and other factors.
“We are beginning the process of designing a new generation robot. It has the potential to be several times faster than Artemis while also being more reliable and autonomous,” says Acworth.
Evolving Technology Pushes the Development of Artemis
Artaic has become more competitive through observation and redesign. Understanding how to improve the robot came from watching the first generations of Artemis in action.
Artemis was born of Acworth’s early interest in mosaics. Acworth, a fan of the mosaics of Italy and Southern Europe, wanted to make it easier for clients to create unique pieces. He chose pick-and-place robots as the primary tool.
This type of technology, which is designed to pick items and set them down in new locations, was first developed in the 1930s by Griffith “Bill” Taylor. Taylor’s creation, “Gargantua,” was a programmable block-setting crane that incorporated parts from a Meccano toy system. Artaic’s first pick-and-place robot, “Arty,” relied on a software program to set down units as well.
Watching Arty carry single tiles motivated Acworth to increase the robot’s capabilities.
Acworth also realized that Arty could be more efficient if it automatically unloaded completed sections of the mosaic and loaded empty grids with tiles. That way, the robot could produce multiple sections in a row without requiring the operator to intervene. Today, Artemis can continuously produce around the clock if needed.
Contemporaneous innovations in scanning and imaging software and 3D printing benefited Artaic. With scanning and imaging tools that are now far more advanced than those available in 2007, Artaic’s software programs can find the exact position and orientation of the tiles as well as the grid on which they are placed. Previously, a craftsperson had to perform these tasks.
Since 3D printers have become cheaper and more capable, Artaic has gained the ability to create specialized parts like fitted tile grids or brackets that are custom made to its needs in-house. In the past, this would have required machining or injection molding. Even a basic prototype would have been expensive and required a significant amount of lead time.
The biggest bottleneck that affects Artaic’s production rate is how best to quickly and efficiently present the tiles to the robot in the proper position for picking. Eventually, the current technology will reach its limits.
“At some point, it may be better to rethink the objective. We can explore an entirely different approach for all or part of the system to take it to the next level. It can be scary, risky, and hard to try to make the big jump. In many cases, this has been the source of huge improvements in our throughput and reliability,” says Acworth.
Steps of the Process
The eight steps of the mosaic creation process are as follows: (1) tile selection; (2) mosaic design customization, which is accomplished using Tylist, an in-house proprietary patented software; (3) free design rendering, or generating an image with the help of a computer program; (4) mosaic sampling, the creation of a mock-up of small sections of the mosaic; (5) tile quality check; (6) robotic manufacturing, which here means the creation of the mosaic by the Artemis robot; (7) final quality check, which is done by a craftsperson who lays out the mosaic in sections under a digital scanner; and (8) packaging the mosaic for shipment.
After the customer receives the mosaic section, they can apply it to building surfaces (walls, floors, bathrooms, swimming pools, etc.) following the pattern indicated by Artaic’s guide.
Going further into the robotic manufacturing process, the procedure involves Artemis using suction to quickly pick up and put tiles into a plastic grid. The robot does this in the order and pattern designated by a second robotic software app. The app completes tasks in imaging, optical engineering and image processing.
Artemis has a certain number of channels. Each channel has a color of tile, like red in channel one and blue in channel two. The optical scanning in Artemis ensures that the tiles are geometrically aligned.
The craftsperson assisting the robot is key to the process. It is difficult to feed the tile into exactly the correct position every time. The craftsperson must tend to the machine, keep feeding it, and top off the bins of tile. Artemis then generates the design by applying the tiles to one-square-foot polymer sheets.
What Motivates Artaic Today
As Artaic plans to reduce costs further, Acworth reflects on what inspired him initially. He says the motivation to create Arty was the drive to achieve continuous process improvement and greater productivity.
“That way we can make the product more affordable and efficient for our customers. They directly experience the result of any improvement in efficiency we can achieve,” says Acworth.
Artaic is currently striving to improve its ability to customize artwork. The company’s newest offering is the Glyph collection, whose pieces allow customers to tell their own stories through a mosaic with handpicked colors and custom icons such as musical instruments.
“Our robots do not recreate hand-cut mosaics like those made by masters of the craft,” says Acworth. “But with commercial tiles, cities and companies can easily install large-scale mosaics in public places, like Simon Hughes’ artwork, “The Day,” at the Kipling Station bus terminal in Toronto. I think this is the primary goal for Artaic—bringing art into people’s everyday lives.”
