In Škoda’s hometown of Mladá Boleslav, a robot has swapped factory shifts for street art duty.
ABB wheeled out its IRB 5500 to the City=Gallery festival and, with a little help from artificial intelligence, produced a large mural on the wall of the Pastelka Art School.
The artwork’s concept came from the public: voters picked style, mood and themes online, which Škoda Design translated into inputs for the AI to generate the final image.
“We are thrilled to take robotics out of the factory and into the heart of the community,” said ABB Robotics Automotive Business Line managing director Joerg Reger.
“We’re not only demonstrating precision engineering – we’re showcasing how technology can respond to people’s creative ideas and bring them to life in a way that’s interactive and inspiring.”
The star of the show was ABB’s PixelPaint, a paint head with 1,000 individually controlled nozzles that works rather like an inkjet printer. Originally created for precise stripes and graphics on car bodies, it can lay down intricate patterns in a single pass without masking, making it oddly perfect for a giant, AI-dreamed mural.
Paint chemistry was tuned for the street. PPG supplied a waterborne basecoat calibrated for PixelPaint, paired with a fast-drying primer and a topcoat to fend off UV and weather, so the piece should outlast a few winters and a lot of selfies.
The live session ran on 4–5 September and was a festival first for a “robot artist”. The collaboration brought together ABB, the Škoda Auto Endowment Fund, Škoda Auto, PPG and City=Gallery organisers, and underscored the festival’s mission to turn public spaces into open-air galleries.
“It shows how strengthening local communities also strengthens the company,” said Endowment Fund director Ladislav Kucera. On this evidence, art, algorithms and a very steady robotic arm make a surprisingly good neighbourhood team.
