Kinetic Sand Art: From Zen Rakes to ABB Robot Arms

In kinetic sand art, a steel ball, a rake or a robot traces lines in sand, and each new pattern wipes out the one before it. This post starts with monks raking gravel in Japanese dry gardens and finger drawings in Vanuatu, moves on to Disney's Beachbot and the Sisyphus table, and ends with the sand tables now sold for living rooms. Along the way it covers a Carnegie Mellon project in which an ABB robot answered a person's drawing in a sandbox, and where ABB's GoFa cobot could fit. The last section deals with what is still hard, from turning pictures into paths to cost and safety around people.

A giant mandala drawn in the sand of La Concha beach in San Sebastián, Spain, June 2025. Photo: Javier Perez Montes / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From temple rakes to a turtle on the beach

Raked gravel is centuries older than any robot. In Japanese dry gardens, or karesansui, gravel stands for water or for empty space. At Ryōan-ji, laid out in the late 15th century, fifteen stones sit in a rectangle of white gravel of about 340 square metres, and the monks carefully rake it every day. The raked lines, called samon, recall waves or rippling water, and Zen priests also rake to help their concentration. The patterns include lines, waves, scrolls and checks, and every one of them is made by hand, one pull of the rake at a time.

The dry garden of Ryōan-ji, with its rock groups set in raked white gravel, 2004. Photo: Stephane D'Alu / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Other cultures drew in sand with their hands. In Vanuatu an artist draws with a single finger, tracing one continuous, meandering line on an imagined grid, and UNESCO proclaimed Vanuatu sand drawings a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2003. Aboriginal Australians have their own tradition: the Pitjantjatjara word milpatjunanyi means the art of telling stories in the sand. Bruce Shapiro, the artist behind the Sisyphus table, spent about 30 years using computer-controlled motion as an artistic medium, and his kinetic pieces are permanent installations in museums in Switzerland, Germany, the United States, Canada, Poland and Australia.

A sand drawing from Vanuatu, the tradition UNESCO recognised in 2003. Photo: PhillipC / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Two sand robots of the 2010s show how wide the range is. Disney Research Zurich and ETH Zurich unveiled Beachbot in Miami in December 2014, a turtle-shaped robot about two feet long with a rake on its tail and an aluminium shell sealed against sand. A laser scanner found four poles marking a 10 by 10 metre canvas, and an inertial sensor helped it track its position. The rake's prongs rose and fell separately to make thick or thin lines. Shapiro's Sisyphus table went the other way and moved indoors: a robot under the sand pulls a steel ball with a magnet, and its Kickstarter campaign launched on 24 September 2016.

A man rakes a giant drawing into the sand of La Concha beach in San Sebastián, August 2025, the kind of beach art Beachbot was built to draw. Photo: Javier Perez Montes / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sand tables in homes and an ABB arm in a sandbox

That campaign became the most funded art project in Kickstarter's first ten years, according to the company, and Sisyphus Industries delivered more than 1,500 tables to backers. It now says over 10,000 Sisyphus tables are in homes, offices, hospitals and education centres, each assembled by hand in Minneapolis. A Wi-Fi controlled robot called the Sisbot drives the ball under a tempered glass top. The companion app offers more than 3,000 sand designs and lets owners draw their own, build playlists and change speed and lights. The company also sells the table as a wellness object, one that soothes the mind.

Concentric lines raked around a moss island in a Zen garden in Kyoto, May 1963. Photo: Sherwin Carlquist / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Sand gardens are still built for calm. On 29 September 2026 Rider University opened a Sensory Garden for students, faculty and staff, with a Zen sand garden among its stations next to a stone-stacking area, wind and wood chimes and sensory curtains. Anissa Moody, the associate dean of student health and wellness, called it "a space where they can find calm". A Zen sand garden is raked by hand, while a kinetic sand table gives that job to a motor and leaves its owner free to watch the pattern form. That swap, from rake to robot, is what the home products sell.

Gravel raked to look like flowing water in the Japanese garden at Kew, 2011. Photo: David Hawgood / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

An ABB robot has already raked sand with a person. In spring 2017 students in Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Machine Virtuosity course built RoboZen. A user drew a curve with a motion-tracked tool, and an ABB six-axis robot answered in the same sandbox with a 3D-printed, fork-like tip. Software sorted each curve and turned it into a mandala, a spiral or a zig-zag pattern. "Watching the robot perform the task puts the user in a relaxing state similar to the meditative function of a zen garden," the team wrote. A GoFa CRB 15000, which ABB builds to share space with people without fencing, could take that role in a lobby, though nobody has announced it.

Students programming a small ABB IRB 120 six-axis arm. Photo: Peterantala / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Where robot sand art goes next

Paul Beardsley of Disney Research picked sand for a simple reason: "Sand drawing is perfect because it's an infinitely reuseable canvas." His team found the toughest problem elsewhere, in turning a picture into a path that a three-wheeled robot could drive, and large drawings still needed manual fixes. The Carnegie Mellon students had their worst trouble converting motion capture data into curves. Industry handles the same job with path software, and a robot program is usually built and tested first in RobotStudio, where a pattern can be checked before an arm touches anything.

A robotics class with ABB GoFa education cells and RobotStudio on screen. Photo: ABB

Scale could grow in both directions. Beardsley said Beachbot's 10 by 10 metre field could become drawings a kilometre long along a beach, while home tables keep the robot hidden under glass and let owners swap patterns through an app. Arms like GoFa sit in between. ABB's cobot reaches up to 1.62 m, is built to work beside people and offers path accuracy down to 0.03 mm when the Ultra Accuracy option is fitted, which is far finer than sand needs. Our post on robot painting and drawing follows the same idea with brushes and pens.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot handling speaker parts at a work table. Photo: ABB

Cost is the first hurdle. A sand table is hand-built art furniture and a cobot is a factory machine, so neither is an impulse buy. Safety changes with the design: a table keeps its robot under glass, while an open arm raking sand near visitors would need the kind of safety features ABB builds into GoFa so it can work beside people without barriers. The software still takes skill, too. Beachbot needed manual path fixes, and RoboZen needed motion capture, Grasshopper and a tool called HAL before the robot could answer a single drawing.

A worker guides an ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot by hand. Photo: ABB

Innovation

AI solutions for effortless ABB robot control.

Automation

Robotics

ceojohntran@chatwithrobot.net

+84905311611

© 2025. All rights reserved.

qtran1215@gmail.com