When Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Art come together: INESC TEC collaborates with Leonel Moura in the creation of Artist Robot

Until July 22, the Árvore – Cooperativa de Atividades Artísticas hosted Leonel Moura’s exhibition “O fim da Arte, tal como a conhecemos?”. The exhibition featured two robots, developed in partnership with INESC TEC, which create “unique paintings without direct human intervention”.

INESC TEC has been collaborating with the Portuguese artist Leonel Moura, a pioneer in the application of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence in art. Recently, the Institute has developed two autonomous robots that, in addition to painting, feature a video camera that allows the online transmission of the painting’s evolution. These solutions were part of the exhibition “O fim da Arte, tal como a conhecemos?”, inaugurated in late June.

INESC TEC – through Paulo Costa, in liaison with José Magalhães Lima and António Paulo Moreira – developed a new robot with omnidirectional traction and artificial vision, capable of communicating with the outside, which is much superior to previous versions. It uses two digital colour cameras: one to inspect the painting canvas and detect the different types of colours, and another placed on top, connected to an external computer, allowing the canvas’ visualisation with a broader perspective. Through a wireless network and an Internet connection, it will be possible to monitor and visualise the evolution of the paintings.

These robots are part of the ARS (Art Robot Swarm) series, a more sophisticated version of ArtSbot (Art Swarm Robot) – the name of Leonel Moura’s first paintings made by autonomous robots. This concept, inspired by the behaviour of ants, perceives the use of robots that work together to create “unique paintings without direct human intervention”.

According to the artist, “these works are a radical change in the way we think about art. Today, intelligent and creative machines can generate texts and paintings similar to those created by human artists – or even more imaginatively. The 2004 works are pioneers in this process. One of the main benefits is the fact that they are carried out in physical spaces, and not on virtual spaces”.

The opening of the exhibition, which took place on June 30, included the presentation of the ARS robot and a lecture by Leonel Moura on Robotic Art and Artificial Intelligence. The exhibition was open until July 22, at Cooperativa Artística Árvore (Porto), and it showed the evolution of the artist’s work, between 2004 and 2023 – entirely created by robots.