Now, a robot artist that can paint 'masterpieces'

Scientists have developed a new artist robot that can choose from five brushes and 24 colours to create a vibrant piece of art and can even decide where to add the next stroke.
The robot cleans the brushes itself and takes pictures of the canvas so that it can access the areas that need more paint.
Developed by a team at the University of Konstanz in Germany, e-David uses software to decide where to add the next brush stroke.
After each brush stroke, e-David takes a picture, and its software calculates such moves as where the image needs to be lightened or darkened, website 'Phys.Org' reported.

Researchers said their project objective is to build a robot that can paint, pure and simple. By paint, they do not mean adding a fresh coat to a kitchen ceiling but delivering art.
The robot is not "person-able," more like the metallic skeleton of a mythical and very studious canine. Researchers used an industry robot normally used to weld car bodies, and enhanced it with sensors, camera, control computer, and art supplies.

The name "David" was chosen because it stands for what the researchers tried to accomplish: Drawing Apparatus for Vivid Image Display.
The computer programme provides drawing commands that are executed by the machine. This can be considered as a step above humans painting- by-numbers: Just as one observes sidewalk artists repeatedly tweaking their lines and dabs and brush strokes as they fill an empty canvas, the robot does something similar, researchers said.

The device takes a picture of what it wants to copy. The robot watches itself paint and decides where to add the next stroke, constantly tweaking its moves based on what it's seeing through a camera pointed at its canvas.