Robots have become increasingly adept at doing the kind of creative tasks that we previously would have reserved solely for humans.  This includes playing jazz solos and cracking jokes.

Of course, the machines aren’t really being creative so much as they’ve just pattern matching huge chunks of data and coming up with what history suggests is a creative pattern.

Now, you could argue that humans do much the same thing, but I don’t want to get too bogged down in a debate over what is or is not creative.  A team from Dartmouth have pushed the creative boundaries a touch further however with a robot that can paint murals.

A painting robot

The project, which is documented in a recently published paper, sees a robot capable of spray painting accurate reproductions of photographs as a large mural.

Suffice to say, the team aren’t intended their approach to be used in a painting context but they do believe it has strong applications in areas ranging from digital fabrication to the visual arts.

We’ve seen similarly interesting approaches with products like SAM, the robotic brick layer and it’s certainly an interesting method of automating what would once have required a skilled professional to deliver the same outcome.

Check out the video below for a look at the machine in action.