SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to develop a comprehensive software toolkit for creating digital mosaic artwork. Mosaics have proven to be a great source of visual splendor for thousands of years. Despite their prominence in art and architecture, mosaics are arduous to design and assemble by hand. The goal of this Phase I project is to build and test software tools to automate production of digital mosaic artwork. After integration with robotic assembly in Phase II, the proposed automation will significantly lower the time and cost for designing and manufacturing mosaic artwork. In Phase I, Artaic proposes to combine two leading methodologies for digital tile layout - procedural and optimization-based algorithms - to closely mimic the workflow of mosaic artists. Artists will sketch curves to denote perceptually important edges along which the tiles should be oriented, while algorithms will determine tile placement in response to user-defined parameters, rendering styles, and composition rules If successful, this work will have broad commercial potential in art, design, and architecture. Software and robotic automation will lower the cost of mosaics and increase its traditional societal impact of adorning public, commercial, and residential spaces. This will also have spillover benefits, including growing use of this artform in advertising, entertainment, and visual effects. The ultimate goal of Artaic is to leverage this software with custom robotics to create physical mosaics. This will enable Artaic to expand into a multi-billion dollar market and grow a domestic workforce. The fact that there is a software outlet for this work in addition to a proven commercial market for large-scale physical output adds to the case for the advancement of the proposed research

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will develop a computer-aided mosaic design and robotic assembly system for automation of a centuries-old manual process. Despite their prominence in art and architecture, mosaics are arduous to design and assemble. Labor-intensive methods have stubbornly resisted automation, adding considerable cost and delay to projects. Artaic's Phase I research proved feasibility of computer-aided design software to create renderings and digital blueprints of artisanal mosaics by introducing a streamlined, procedural workflow for tile layout that closely mimicked the workflow of mosaic artists, and did so over 10x faster than manual methods. The goal of the Phase II research is to demonstrate the speed, effectiveness, utility, and artistic quality of this mosaic design and robotic assembly system. The key Phase II objectives are to: (1) demonstrate a prototype artisanal mosaic design system and; (2) demonstrate a robotic mosaic production system, that will be: (3) validated for accuracy, speed, and quality through user assessment, and; (4) evaluated for economic and commercial potential. Anticipated technical results will enable a revolutionary advancement from manual to automated processes in mosaic design and production, comparable to the displacement of film by digital camera technology. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project lies in art, design, construction, and architecture. Software and robotic automation will lower the cost of mosaics and increase its traditional societal impact of adorning public, commercial, and residential spaces. Artists, designers, and builders will have a significantly faster method to produce artisanal mosaics without the high cost and time associated with manual design and production. The efficiencies made possible by this proposed computer-aided mosaic design and manufacturing system will enable Artaic to expand into the global multi-billion dollar tile market and develop a domestic workforce to compete against global manufacturers of handcrafted mosaic artwork. Additionally, the computational demands of the rendering algorithms developed during Phase II will give impetus to further development of advanced GPUs and CPUs -- with companies such as Intel, Nvidia, and AMD providing solutions for increasingly more advanced rendering algorithms. Perhaps the most significant societal benefit from the development of this technology is its potential to make artisanal mosaic design and production accessible and affordable to the general public, and because this research enables any Photoshop artist to become a mosaic artist, it also hold significant promise as an educational tool in our nation's schools.