Meet Frida, Carnegie Mellon’s AI-powered drawing robot

PITTSBURGH — So many people think they aren’t artistic at all, but a new robot created at Carnegie Mellon University lets anyone become an artist.

The robot’s name is Frida, and it’s a drawing robot. It’s one of the latest creations from CMU’s Robotics Institute. PhD student Peter Schaldenbrand has worked on Frida for four years.

“It’s to help people create art, more art, or just engage with it in a different way,” said Schaldenbrand.

Schaldenbrand showed Channel 11 how Frida works. Users can either select a picture online for the robot to draw or draw one for themselves to take over and enhance. The robot takes about three minutes to scan the picture and come up with a plan. Then it’s off, creating brush strokes and an image the user can color, paint or leave as is.

“Sometimes you start to use the robot and you have a very clear picture of what you want to create, but the robot can have a very different picture. And so, if you’re closed-minded, it might be frustrating, but if you’re open-minded, you might come up with something completely different, and maybe it’s special,” said Schaldenbrand.

The team behind Frida believes it can be used in many different ways.

“The initial hope was using this painting and sculpting as kind of the domain so that we can do fun robotics research. And then this second part kind of came as a serendipity to me, at least. So, because art has this therapeutic effect, and it’s just something that people enjoy and appreciate,” said CMU Robotics Institute Professor Jean Oh.

Professor Oh added that they plan to study whether the robot can help with dexterity or physical activity for seniors or children, or even help someone with their mental health.

“We realize that people really like it, so we’re curious,” said Oh. “As a scientist, we want to know what’s going on. Is that their emotion being affected? Or is there a true health benefit?”

Frida works using artificial intelligence, a topic assistant CMU professor Jun-Yan Zhu knows well.

“It’s nice to have a robot involved in these kind of creativity tasks,” said Zhu.

Zhu stressed that while some people have concerns about AI, he believes if it’s used right, the possibilities are endless. He urged the key is using AI like Frida does: to enhance what humans can do.

“They don’t have to compete with humans and humans don’t have to compete with them. I think they just bring different perspectives,” said Zhu.

Professor Oh said Frida taught her robots can’t create art, just pictures for humans to decide if it’s interesting or not. She calls the robot a cool and therapeutic tool to encourage creativity.

“I always tell people, art is for everyone and we want to see art everywhere. So hopefully our work helps accomplish the goal in the world,” said Oh.

“We hope anybody can be an artist using this machine,” Schaldenbrand added.

Frida is a prototype and the group continues to work on the concept. Professor Oh also added they’d love to create a sculpting robot one day.

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