AI powered CNC Painting Machine - Blog #1 - Idea

THE IDEA

I have some spare stepper motors and CNC parts, so I thought to build an AI powered Painting Machine using the Raspberry Pi.

The machine will work as follows:

• a source image / photo is provided
  • the RPi Cam could be also used to take a photo
• the image / photo is given to a AI algorithm to transform it to the style of a famous painter
  • inspiration
    
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    AI powered CNC Painting Machine - Blog #1 - Idea

    Poster

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    (source: Two Minute Papers)
  • white paper:

    Chuan Li, Michael Wand - Combining Markov Random Fields and Convolutional Neural Networks for Image Synthesis
    (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1601.04589v1.pdf)

• the output image is sent to a Raspberry Pi controlled CNC painting machine, which will output the image to a piece of paper
  • I thought to try different approaches, to see which works better:
    • color pen based
    • laser engraving
    • 3D printing few layers
    • etc.

The frame I want to build using OpenBuild parts (aluminium profiles, bearings, wheels, belts). It will look something like this:

(https://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-5500mW-Laser-Engraver-Cutter/ )

Bill of Materials
(preliminary list)

• PiCasso Design Challenge: The Kit
  • Raspberry Pi 3 B+ (/starter kit)
  • Raspberry Pi Camera V2
  • PiFace Digital 2
• 2 x NEMA 17 stepper motors (I have these)

• 2 x lead screws (I have these)
• extruded aluminium profiles, bearings, wheels, belts, etc for the free (need to purchase)

• 2 x stepper driver (DRV8825)
• 1 x servo motor (I have these)
• laser module (i have some from DVD drivers)

Of sure, all the hardware and software parts of project will be fully open source.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Today I got the challenge kit. Here it is along with some CNC parts I had:

The next 2 blog post / steps, I think, will be:

1. CNC Frame - find an open source CNC frame, suitable for the project; order parts
2. AI Algorithm - find an implementation / try to reproduce the image transformation algorithm from the linked white paper

Cheers,

Attila