Watching this robot paint a car

I come across “neat tricks” performed by industrial robots all the time, and many of them are about as interesting as watching paint dry. ABB Robotics’ newest trick is literally that, and

somehow it is mesmerizing beyond words. The industry giant released a video of its robot painting an art car. It’s a flex for the precision and flexibility of its robotics products, of

course, but _just look at it_, it’s extraordinary. For this PR stunt, the company collaborated with eight-year-old Indian child prodigy Advait Kolarkar and Dubai-based digital design

collective Illusorr, to create the world’s first robot-painted art car. The project is showing off the company’s PixelPaint technology, which is basically an inkjet printer with 1,000

nozzles mounted on an industrial robot. There’s a lot of marketing-speak mumbo jumbo attached with this, and I could write about it, but I’m just not gonna. Instead, watch this mini

documentary the company produced. It’s three minutes well spent. [embedded content] ABB’s ultimate pitch is for PixelPaint to make manufacturing more sustainable, removing the need for

masking materials and extra ventilation, which in turn, the company suggests, lowers emissions while saving water and energy. The paint head tracks very closely to the vehicle, ensuring that

all the paint goes on the actual car, rather than spraying all over the place. Different paint colors are applied quickly, and the item being painted only runs through the paint shop once.

ABB claims that this can halve the production time and reduce costs by up to 60%.