Disney Study in collaboration with ETH Zurich have designed and created a robot that can create spectacular sand drawings. The robot was named Beachbot and resembles an orange and white turtle. The robot even has a rounded prime and protrusions that were made to look like the robot has a head and a pair of eyes.
The Disney Beachbot robot can draw sophisticated designs on sand using a special rake, which earned it the reputation of the first autonomous robot that can draw sand art, ever created. The Beachbot robot can receive commands for creating sand drawings via an application.
The Disney Beachbot robot is measures approximately two feet in length and 16 inches in width. It uses three wheels for moving around; the robot has two wheels in the back and one in the front, used for steering.
The robot features a rake-like tool in the back that is used for creating the sand drawings. It can create lines as thin as five inches or wider, approximately two feet wide.
The Beachbot uses poles that have reflective targets which are connected to a laser scanner, thus being able to navigate correctly.
The creators of the Beachbot robot talked about their invention saying that the robot must be sealed from any sand particle in order to be able to draw on it. The robot is equipped with an aluminum shell and with something that resembles two pair of lips, making sure that not a single sand particle gets inside the little machine.
The robot has a software which helps it transform pictures into sand drawings. The software also helps the robot move in the sand.
The creators of the robot developed several prototypes while creating the Beachbot. They tested it on a huge bed filled with sand that mimicked a beach. The developers said that one of the biggest challenges when creating the robot was to develop the right algorithms that could convert a given design into sand drawings. The challenge was getting the robot to follow the trajectory of the given design.
The Disney Beachbot robot uses technologies that can sense depth in order to be as precise as possible when creating the sand art.
Image Source: Daily Mail


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