A calligraphy robot — Callibot: Design, analysis and applications

Abstract

Combining functions with aesthetics, characters with drawings, Chinese calligraphy is a unique type of traditional art in China. To mimic the special writing skills, we develop a calligraphy robot which consists of one 6-DOF robot arm, one linear rail and one paper conveyor. This calligraphy robot, called Callibot, has several features. Firstly, it has sufficient degrees of freedom and very few singularities which improve the manipulability of the robot. Secondly, Callibot could mimic real motion of human writing because playback from demonstration approach is adopted. The encoders will record the joint positions while demonstrating. Then Callibot filters out the noises (error readings in serial port communication) and repeats the motion. Thirdly, the workspace of the robot arm is largely expanded due to the linear rail and the paper conveyor. The experimental results show that Callibot is capable of writing a large piece of aesthetic calligraphic work.