Drone Graffitis Public Canvas in Torino, Italy

CNET has reported on a first of its kind a picturesque image was created by a unique collaboration of man and machine: humans designed the large-scale image but drones painted it.

Watch out Banksy! Looks you’re facing some serious competition from drones in street art concept.

A swarm of artsy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from Tsuru Robotics painted a large-scale work of graffiti on a giant public canvas in Torino, Italy, last week — and it did so, one could say, with flying colours.

As part of a collaborative project called UFO-Urban Flying Opera, which was working on the theme “Design the City”, thousands of people contributed via app. Visual representations inspired by a team of art curators selected and combined about 100 of the designs. Then spanning two days it took four flying drones to draw the image simultaneously using about 2,034 feet of paint.  The end result was a spectacular large-scale vertical painting standing 46×39 feet.

Four drones armed with cans of spray paint worked on the canvas simultaneously. The drones worked in perfect synchronization as they flew, wielding tanks of spray paint, inside a cathedral-like industrial structure in Aurelio Peccei park on Torino’s outskirts. Thanks to a central management system controlled the UAVs in real time, and a monitoring system tracked their precise location and coordinated their formation.

The art prompt asked participants around the world to ponder how they see or imagine their city, or any city, and what they love about urban life or want from it. The painting showed a swirl of shapes — buildings, houses, helicopters, trees, flowers, stick figures — layered in gray, magenta and light blue. The word “welcome” appears on the right and the words “city life” on the lower left.

Professor Carlo Ratti of MIT’s Sensable City Lab and the international design and innovation firm CRA, which curated the project said, “The city is an open canvas, where people can inscribe their stories in many ways,” adding, “Such processes have always been happening; however, with UFO we tried to accelerate them, using drone technology to allow for a new use of painting as a means of expression.”

In the future city graffiti and mural designer will have some automated help at hand from aerial painting drones.