Mosaic Design Gets Assist From Robotics and Enterprise Software

Artaic is a Boston-based startup that manufactures beautiful mosaic designs similar to those that have been produced throughout history. What’s different is that the company creates its art using technology and robots to produce thousands of patterns. Ted Acworth, Artaic’s founder and CEO, formed the company in 2007 after seeing a need for a faster, more efficient way to build mosaic designs, which historically has been a labor-intensive process.

“I looked at the tile industry [and] realized it’s a huge market,” he says. “People settle for boring tile because it’s too expensive to get beautiful, more artistic tile, [but] technology can enable more people to get more beautiful tile.”

Read CIO.com’s article on Artaic and watch our video on how Arty, the robot, speeds up the mosaic manufacturing process.

Once the image is selected, Artaic uses its CAD software to manipulate the image into a pixelated format, which allows it to be translated into a mosaic. During this process, the image is sent back to the customer in several stages to give them an opportunity to make changes.

“We’ll iterate in the design software three or four times with the designer,” says Goodwin. “Then when they like one of the directions we’re moving in — based on a certain tile type and color — we will sample the project and they’ll approve it.” Artaic then orders the specified tile from its suppliers and begins production.

Next, the clear plastic tubes are fed into to Artaic’s robot, named Arty. Arty’s robotic arm picks tiles from each row and places them into the correct pattern according to the mosaic. Once the square is completed, a clear backing is placed on top, sealing in all the tiles. That’s the finished product and the final step is to ship all the squares to the customer for installation.