Robotic fabrication techniques such as 3D printing enable you to make a copy of a wide variety of items. Actually sculpting something out of clay, however, remains a largely human pursuit. One might also miss the individual style of a sculptor in a finished product.

RobotSculptor, developed by a team of engineers from ETH Zurich and Disney Research, attempts to address both challenges. The system generates toolpaths from a base mesh design and allows artistic input via mouse strokes during the process. A six-axis robot arm then incrementally removes clay from the model-in-progress, using a custom loop tool.

An Arduino Uno-controlled turntable acts as a seventh axis for the robot, giving it the ability to reach different areas of the model in order to create complex 3D shapes.

More details on the project can be found in the researchers’ paper and in Gizmodo’s article here.