On most Mondays during football season, two Duke employees can be found at Wallace Wade Stadium painting the field to get it ready for the upcoming weekend. They spend a few hours meticulously spraying paint to provide bright lines and clean designs in the end zone.
Except one employee, Sergei, isn’t a person at all.
Advertisement
A little over five years ago, Duke invested in a Turf Tank. It’s a tablet-controlled robot that uses GPS to accurately paint field designs and logos up to 30 miles away with one centimeter precision.
Duke takes pride in its field maintenance — it was named the 2023 Sports Field Management Association Field of the Year — and Sergei’s implementation became a way to improve its processes further.
The endeavor began as a way to simplify and make football turf management more efficient, saving the university money, time and creating a better product. It has turned into a campus-wide art project of sorts, helping the university hospital, admissions office and other departments around the school.
“My favorite part is it can do a lot of different things that people don’t even know about,” said Ian Christie, Duke senior superintendent of landscape management. “It’s like an artist having a crayon or pencil or whatever you want to use. The robot is that pencil, and you as a user can tell it what to do. That creativity is limitless.”
Advertisement
How does the Turf Tank robot work?
The traditional turf painting method requires a lot of people, math, measuring and time. When painting a fresh field, Sergei cuts down on all four variables.
Christie works closely with turf managers Cooper Boyce and Piper Richardson. They previously spent hours at a time marking boundaries and other points on each field with long tape measures and string. That was before the painting process even began.
If paint from a previously-used field remained as a guideline, the process wasn’t quite as laborious but still required hours of work at a time.
Now, painting is a matter of real life copying and pasting.
Duke’s painting robot draws lines at Koskinen Stadium
Duke’s staff programmed various geometric shapes into the software, which it uses on most fields. The initial setup for a new design still takes measuring to ensure accuracy, NCAA requirements are fulfilled and everything meets the eye test. The paint can be mathematically correct and perfectly straight, but if a foul pole or goalkeeper’s net isn’t exactly aligned, the lines will look incorrect.
Advertisement
Once a field is painted for the first time and its settings are saved, though, it’s just a matter of pressing “start” for all future jobs.
“That’s why I kind of tweak things very precisely in the beginning,” Christie said. “It takes me a little while, but once it’s there, it’s there.”
Even though the robots are tablet-controlled, they don’t require complete hands-on monitoring.
Instead, the stationary GPS technology to determine accurate paint locations for each saved field, making the robot semi-autonomous.
Richardson likes to call each paint job “babysitting.” She often keeps an eye on Sergei for potential problems but doesn’t feel the need to be overly involved because it knows where to go. At softball, it knows where the batters boxes are and the pitchers’ circle. The GPS guides the robot where it needs to paint the goalkeeper’s box for soccer.
Advertisement
Christie said in the past, coaches would request painting but the staff wouldn’t have enough time. Or, campus would get unexpected rain and cut into the time available to paint. It now takes half an hour to paint soccer or lacrosse fields. Baseball and softball can be done in 10 to 15 minutes.
Turf Tank, a Danish company, created the robots as a way to save paint and save time. Duke purchased the robot primarily for efficiency — Christie is willing to use as much paint as necessary to provide bright lines — but its capabilities have still reduced the amount of paint used.
The facilities team previously painted fields even when they weren’t in use just so they wouldn’t lose the previous lines and have to re-measure. That is no longer necessary with the coordinates saved in the software.
Additionally, the staff can decide if it wants to paint quickly or perform a slower job. The paint can be watered down, too, if that’s what’s best for the project.
Advertisement
“We can paint things quicker, and it’s stored in the iPad, so I don’t have to keep painting it for no reason,” Christie said. “As a result, I don’t use as much paint as I did before. … We can do all these different things that we couldn’t before. It, in turn, saves the amount of paint that we do use and it’s better for the grass.”
Why Duke bought a Turf Tank
Former Duke head football coach David Cutcliffe wanted multiple layouts painted on the team’s practice fields, so the facilities team painted them regularly. It handled that in addition to regular upkeep required for the primary playing surface.
When Christie and his staff needed to measure every aspect of Brooks Field, it took three people and 10 hours. Painting the practice fields took roughly the same amount of time. He called it “very intense.”
Advertisement
Christie began evaluating alternative options, asking other people in the industry for advice and recommendations. That’s how he discovered the Turf Tank.
Virginia, led by its sports turf manager Jesse Pritchard, was the only school in the ACC and one of the first in the nation at the time to have a robot.
The Cavaliers added theirs, named U-VAngogh, about six years ago, after the university added an additional pair of grass practice football fields. The staff just wasn’t big enough to handle the upkeep. Pritchard opted for a three-month demo before entering into a six-year contract.
Virginia uses it primarily for soccer, lacrosse, football practice and camps. It does not use the robot for football games, softball or baseball.
Advertisement
When the Blue Devils decided to streamline their work processes, Christie called Pritchard. They discussed what the robots could and could not do, positives, negatives, challenges and whether it was worth trying.
Duke quickly became the second ACC team with a painting robot.
“I like being a guinea pig. You can be on the cutting edge of new technology before 90% of people get it,” Christie said. “I like being the first and I just like trying new things. I like trying to see if we can be better, if we can be more efficient. We’re afforded that opportunity at Duke to try to really be the best, whether it be a paint machine or fields or landscapes.”
N.C. State uses a robot for football and soccer, the a university spokesperson said. The Wolfpack updated its lease in April for a Turf Tank Two, the contract is worth $39,700 through April 2028, according to a receipt obtained through a public records request.
Advertisement
UNC purchased a robot this spring. The Tar Heels leased the Turf Tank Two on a professional software subscription, according to UNC’s contract. It is expected to cost $99,200 over six years. Carolina requested a quote for the robot on Jan. 21, six days before it announced Kenan Stadium would return to a natural grass field.
As one of the company’s early clients, Duke served as an unofficial product tester and developer. (Pritchard called Duke’s robot as “Frankenstein.”) Christie said the facilities staff has adjusted, or gotten the company to adjust, software, field layouts, logos and even mechanical components to make the product better.
The software can now paint every conference logo in the country, Christie said. His team also found new parts that worked better and presented its suggestions to Turf Tank, which implemented those recommendations on new models. “It turned out very well,” Christie said. “They’ve been very happy with it. It’s been a great mutual partnership.”
How much does the robot cost?
A Turf Tank is not any basic remote-controlled machine. The Duke facilities staff compared it to a vehicle — and it has the price to match. Christie said the university spent roughly $50,000 to buy the robot outright, but the company now primarily focuses on leasing its different models. Prospective customers can also choose between different subscriptions, which are focused on the warranty, customer support options and software tools available, based on an organization’s needs. Lease agreements typically last roughly six years and range, on average, $6,000 to $16,000 per year. At the end of each subscription, the company replaces the parts to allow for reuse.
Advertisement
Those that are not part of that program last 5 to 10 years, though regular maintenance can extend their useful lives for additional years. The company has expanded across the globe, and most teams in the ACC have one. Christie said some teams, including professional organizations and SEC programs, have multiple. Duke saved enough money in labor and supplies in the first 12 to 18 months on football-only work to pay for the robot, Christie said.
Additionally, the program no longer has to pay the $4,000 to $6,000 required for any end zone stencils. Pritchard, meanwhile, estimated UVA spends 80 or 85% less to lease its robot than it would cost to hire another full-time employee and provide benefits. “We knew that if we saved [that money] just for one sport, for one year, basically to pay it off, then what would we save if we did it for every sport, every field?” Christie said. “And that was even before really uncovering the different things they could do with class logos and logos at the hospital.”
Cross-campus paint robot success
While painting athletic fields serve as the primary purpose, Duke puts Sergei to work across campus.
Advertisement
Christie said his staff has painted images and messages for the hospital’s annual Donate Life campaign, breast cancer awareness and during Covid-19. It also began working with admissions to spray paint numerical outlines for the annual “Class of” portrait, which places first-year students inside a barricade of sorts to create their expected graduation year.
Cooper Boyce operates the paint robot to paint the class photo numbers (2027) on Duke University’s East Campus
“We don’t have to, but if I can save three people six hours every time they want to do it, and it takes me 20 minutes, I’d love to,” Christie said of the inter-departmental collaboration.
The facilities department is open to any project or idea. Richardson said her favorite design ever painted was the Hellraiser logo on the softball infield.
Advertisement
Christie said detailed logos like that, or ones for the football end zone, usually require work with Turf Tank developers.
“They do all their way-above-my-pay-grade computer stuff and they [give] me the logo back in a couple weeks,” Christie said, noting ultra-detailed pieces may still need some hand-sprayed work. “I like to say anything’s possible and that we can do it. I just gotta make a couple phone calls.”
Sergei has gotten a break this summer, but with football season right around the corner, the robot will be back in action soon.
When asked if they’d go back to painting the traditional way, Christie, Boyce and Richardson all gave an emphatic no. There are software and mechanical hiccups that pop up, which can be a hassle. The robots are built to European standards, also requiring troubleshooting. Despite the imperfections, the robots have made painting easier, faster, more precise. And, frankly, they’re kind of fun.
Advertisement
“I will work with this technology and get it right versus any other issues we have and the labor intensity that it takes to do it the old fashioned way,” Christie said.
The News & Observer’s Inside Look takes readers behind the scenes to illuminate the people and places in our community.
