OK ROBOT

摘要

In the new short film Artoo in Love, the famous Star Wars droid goes head-over-wheels for a similarly dome-shaped U.S. mailbox. The film, written and directed by Autodesk engineer Evan Atherton, called for a scene in which the lovers pose for a sketch artist, also a robot. Not settling for fakery, Atherton asked his Autodesk colleague DAVID THOMASSON if he could train a robot to sketch from life. Why not? They tutored the robot first on line drawings, guiding its arm across the canvas, then moved on to curves and flourishes until its algorithms could eventually take over. With the film wrapped, the team is now teaching the robot to paint and eventually will use motion-capture so it can mimic and adapt human actions to make more original works. The hope, says Thomasson, is that robots will be not just "a practical tool but also a creative partner."