At the end of September and the beginning of October, ARTI and Pixelrunner had a perfect reason to be excited. We received approval for the joint robotic outdoor printing project “SIMPRINT” as part of the Silicon Eurocluster Open Call!
Silicon Eurocluster is an EU-funded project by member clusters of the Silicon Europe Alliance. The main objective of the Silicon Eurocluster project is to strengthen European technology and sovereignty in the field of semiconductors. The projects open up new innovative fields of application for key topics. These key topics are radio communication, cyber security, artificial intelligence, energy harvesting, photonics, and sensors.
We are delighted that our joint project SIMPRINT was one of 12 winning projects out of 61 submissions. We see this as high praise for the application’s design. Furthermore, we feel it recognises the innovative project idea and ARTI’s and Pixelrunner’s joint technological expertise. Most importantly, it is an incentive to achieve an excellent project result.
So, what was the specific task?
In simple terms, Silicon Eurocluster partners sought market-oriented projects from a consortium of at least two European SMEs. The SMEs should use microelectronics-related technologies to improve existing business processes. Thereby, transforming less digitized application areas with advanced technologies, and focus on sustainability. The project aims to complete a functioning demonstrator within nine months.
Who is now in the project and makes robotic outdoor printing simple?
Pixelrunner and ARTI have a long-standing innovation partnership. Pixelrunner is an Upper Austrian company with a pioneering role in automatic large-scale landscape printing. These large-scale outdoor prints are for example used for marketing purposes. The robotics software company ARTI has already supported Pixelrunner in optimizing the software for the MK2 printing robot. The result was that the printing process could now run entirely automatically without using inaccurate GPS data for localization. This was a first step towards robotic outdoor printing!
Robotic outdoor printing made simple – what is SIMPRINT?
The SIMPRINT project idea arose from Pixelrunner’s desire to have a simpler, smaller and lighter printing robot than the MK2. We will design the new robot for simple, single-colour print jobs. The MK2 robot is difficult to transport and often too complex for smaller, single-colour print jobs.
Our solution to the problem: SIMPRINT! Simplified Mobile Printer with Increased Autonomy. Pixelrunner and ARTI are jointly developing a new, simpler printing robot based on the ARTI CHASI platform and a new print beam produced by Pixelrunner. The SIMPRINT demonstrator for robotic outdoor printing runs with the latest ARTI software. It also includes some new features, such as a particular driving manoeuvre of the robot during the “line change” in the printing process.
What happens now?
The project start was on October 1st. Since then, we set and achieved the first milestones. We will be happy to inform you as soon as there is news!
Funding Disclaimer
We are proud that the Silicon Eurocluster Network partners selected our submission as one of the winning projects. We thank the Cluster partners and the funding body, the European Union, for their trust and financial support. To sum up, ARTI and Pixelrunner are convinced that they can create an innovative demonstrator for robotic outdoor printing made simple!
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Silicon Eurocluster. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
