Line-us robotic arm turns digital doodles into pen-and-paper sketches

A new robotic arm has been developed by scientists which is capable of recreating a digital doodle with pen and paper, by mimicking a user's drawing motions. The robotic drawing arm, dubbed Line-us, was designed by a team of researchers, who combined their knowledge of kinetic art, drawing machines and internet-connected microprocessor chips to develop the idea.

"We wanted to create a product that was engaging and fun,rather than something that solved a particular problem orfulfilled a need," said Robert Poll, one of Line-us'co-founders. "Our hope is that Line-us encourages people to doodle and draw, but also to find new and creative ways to use it to do things we haven't thought of," said Poll, an AI software to designer based in the UK.

Beyond the art-mimicking robot, the Line-us app adds another layer of innovation to the project. The researchers designed the app to be "open platform" to allow users to build on the foundations of the Line-us project, 'Live Science' reported. "You can write your own software, or even hardware, to work with Line-us. We're hoping to build a community that will come up with interesting and new ways to use Line-us," Poll said.

You can use either a stylus or your fingers to make the drawings that the robotic arm will mimic, the researchers said. A larger version of the drawing robot, or perhaps acompletely new robot, may be in Line-us' future, Poll said. When made available commercially, the robot will cost about USD 124, the researchers said.