• Special offers guesthouse in Umbria
  • Home page
  • News
  • FRIDA's robotic arm using AI models to paint pictures ows its name also to Frida Kahlo

FRIDA's robotic arm using AI models to paint pictures ows its name also to Frida Kahlo

08 February 2023

FRIDA stands for Framework and Robotics Initiative for Developing Arts, a project realized by the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, but choosing the acronym FRIDA was an homage to Frida Kahlo. 

The Robotics Institute (RI) has created a system that uses a robotic arm with a paintbrush strapped to it to enable the gadget to produce artwork on its own in response to text or visual cues from users.

The robot painter can paint a specific picture - recreating the works of the great artists, mimic a photograph, or create art in a different artist's style. The human being is not only necessary, but he is crucial for tasks that FRIDA is not yet ready for, as well as for FRIDA to function since it is the one who provides it with the information that it must paint. The robotic arm is not able to choose either the type of canvas or the color scheme.

FRIDA is a project exploring the intersection of human and robotic creativity,” says CMU professor Jim McCann. “FRIDA is using the kind of AI models that have been developed to do things like caption images and understand scene content and applying it to this artistic generative problem.

------------

"Frida is not generating the ideas to communicate," Peter Schaldenbrand - a Ph.D. student at CMU's School of Computer Science and one of the robot's creators - said. That's where humans come in, communicating goals for Frida with text inputs. They can also show the bot images in a style they like or even flash photographs they want to see represented as a painting. The researchers are even playing around with audio prompts (they played ABBA's song Dancing Queen, an excellent choice, and asked Frida to paint it). Frida suggests appropriate paint colors on screen, then humans mix it in the robot's palette. 

"Frida can help someone experiencing physical barriers to creating visual art," Schaldenbrand told me. "Frida can also help people who don't have time to engage in art as it can automate some of the tedious elements. We are now moving forward and working with people to see the range of Frida's capabilities."

Taken from cnet.com. Read  the complete article at the link below.