Skip to footer

Disney Research team builds robot that draws in the sand

The testudine Beachbot has a retractable rake that allows it to draw patterns in the sand.

The Beachbot robot, developed by Disney Research and ETH Zurich.

Robots are evolving rapidly — and now, they've finally drawn a line in the sand. Literally.

The Beachbot is a turtle-shaped robot that uses a retractable rake and a bevy of onboard sensors to draw elaborate lines and designs on sandy surfaces. As a prototype, the Beachbot still has a few bugs that need to be worked out, but its creators at the Disney Research labs say that it will soon be able to execute enormous designs that stretch across an entire beach.

MORE: Best Robot Vacuums

For now, Beachbot can only create designs within a 10 x 10-meter square area, which needs to be marked by four poles with reflective material on them.  With its onboard laser scanner, Beachbot will detect the poles and use them to determine the borders of its drawing area.

Because it's retractable, Beachbot's rake can create multiple lines, not just one continuous line. It can also be extended tine by tine to create lines of varying thickness, from five centimeters to 40 centimeters in width. The images released of Beachbot's creations show almost no trace of the robot's three wheels alongside its rake patterns.

The Beachbot was developed by a partnership between the Zurich labs of Disney Research and a team of students from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). In addition to Beachbot itself, the team had to come up with software that could take an image and transform it into a motion path that Beachbot could execute.

Beachbot's cute turtle design also serves a functional purpose: It's completely sealed to stop any sand from getting into its inner workings.

"The robot will be deployed at a public beach to amaze beachgoers who pass by," the research team said in a press release. "Not only the final picture is important, the whole drawing process will provide an exceptional, magical show."

Jill Scharr is a staff writer for Tom's Guide, where she regularly covers security, 3D printing and video games. You can email Jill at jscharr@tomsguide.com, or follow her on Twitter @JillScharr and on Google+. Follow us @tomsguide, on Facebook and on Google+.

Copyright 2015 Toms Guides , a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Disney Research team builds robot that draws in the sand
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0113/Disney-Research-team-builds-robot-that-draws-in-the-sand
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe