UC Santa Barbara will be serving as the host base camp for the Austrian National Team in its preparations for the upcoming World Cup and the Gauchos’ athletic staff will be utilizing robot technology to paint its soccer fields for the Austrian club.

The robot is made by Turf Tank and it is an autonomous GPS-guided robot built specifically to paint the lines, logos, numbers and hashmarks on athletic fields.

UC Santa Barbara has been using Turf Tank since 2024 to paint its athletic fields for its intercollegiate athletic teams, and it will now also utilize the robot to help the Austrian National Team in its preparations for the World Cup.

Austria’s first match is against Jordan on June 16th at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

The Turf Tank is controlled using a tablet. The robot itself connects to a base station which is set in a fixed location on the field and using GPS, the base station connects to satellites flying high above the earth telling the robot exactly where to paint every single time and the robot paints with incredible accuracy.

Turf Tank can be programmed to paint any athletic field (football, soccer, baseball, softball, lacrosse and others) so it can be used year-round and the robots can even paint grass parking lots, which many schools and sports facilities now have.

UC Santa Barbra and Westmont College are among more than 5,000 U.S. elementary, middle and high schools, local parks and recreation departments, major colleges and universities, and NFL and MLS teams and stadiums currently using Turf Tank’s robots to line and paint their athletic fields.