Unique partnership to develop robot that helps to reduce cost of artworks

A new robot is being trained at Brisbane’s Urban Art Projects to create large-scale public art pieces to help reduce costs.

The Queensland University of Technology is leading the five-year project in partnership with UAP, the Innovative Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre (IMCRC), RMIT and Laing O’Rourke.

The aim of the $8 million design robotics research project is to not only reduce the cost of artworks, but also for SMEs to more easily make high-value products and help create export opportunities.

UAP founder Matthew Tobin’s work involves hand-crafting techniques to design artworks, with the company’s pieces including the Gehry Staircase in Sydney and Wahat Al Karama in Abu Dhabi.

These artworks can involve vast amounts of manual, laborious work, so the company wanted to develop a robot that can see like a human and independently find and determine how to manufacture and organise parts, as well as clean material off products.