Abstract
Interior wall painting is a common work in construction which consumes a lot of time and human effort. By replacing human manual operation, robotic painting was introduced to improve the accuracy, efficiency, and to reduce the cost. In this paper, we introduce an autonomous wall painting robot that can paint the interior walls of a room, using a paint sprayer with the help of a cascade lift mechanism. This cascade lift mechanism assists the paint sprayer to reach the required heights. The mecanum wheels with dc motors that are attached to the base of the robot, helps in easy movement of the robot, to move in all six directions with 2 DOF (degrees of freedom). The robot uses ultrasonic sensors to detect the distance and adjust to the walls, and to check whether the sprayer reached the top of the wall. The master controller controls the ultrasonic sensors, mecanum wheels, and all other parts of the robot. The overall system runs on an AC power supply.
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Author Keywords
- autonomous wall painting robot,
- ultrasonic sensors,
- cascade lift,
- spray painting
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IEEE Keywords
- Painting,
- Paints,
- Mobile robots,
- Robot sensing systems,
- DC motors,
- Wheels
Introduction
Painting work (commercial or residential dwellings), is physically quite intensive, requires consistent vigilance, and yet boring, due to the repeating actions of painting procedures; the work could be uncomfortable or unsettling because of harmful chemicals present in the paint or other solvents, which can be nauseating or cause respiratory problems to the workers. With its numerous benefits like quality control, repeatability, waste reduction, faster cycle times –automated painting could very well provide a way out. Concurrent upsides of automation include reduced labor costs and a lower probability of blunders. These factors inspired the concept of an automated robotic painting system. This gadget aims to develop an interior wall painting robot. The key features of this autonomous robot include portability and compact contour. The robot is designed using a few aluminum rods, spray guns, mecanum wheels, and a master controller unit to control the entire operation of the robot. The elegant design of the robot gives better stability and minimum power loss is expected due to the less moving parts of the robot. The painting trajectory of the robot is insuch a way that there will be less paint wastage. This robot is dependable, maintenance easy, and easy to install in a working environment.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
According to the proliferation of building construction across India from the year 2010 – 2020. The growth rate was estimated to be 2.95 percent from 2010 to 2015 and 5.65 percent from 2015 to 2020 [1]. The real problems emanate when the demand for painters increases, and there are very few skilled laborers available for the onerous, demanding painting work. Painting is a time-intensive, burdensome task. Generally, most nations use manual labor for painting, which is hazardous to health, by overexposure to paints and other chemicals; paints contain high amounts of volatile organic compounds, which if inhaled or ingested, can lead to health ailments like asthma, infertility, and neurological disorders. The process of painting is a time-consuming ordeal, whereas automation makes the task easier and simpler with a high production rate. So, to overcome these problems, robotics and automation help us to develop an autonomous wall painting robot which can help us to do painting with more precision and faster than human workers.
RELATED WORKS
In the research work [2], the author re-affirmed the idea of an automated interior wall painting robot, Robo Painter, with a robotic arm fixed to it. This arm is anchored to a base platform, into which 10 ultrasonic sensors are attached, to self-localize and navigate the walls. An Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) is attached to its base, which monitors structural vibrations, for the detection of empty paint cups. The robot can perform nondecorative and decorative paintings of an area (0.25 x 2.45) m2 that can be painted within 10seconds. The authors in paper [3] Presented AGWallP, a spray-paint based automatic wall painter, with inputs fed in, from a remote user. This robot uses a mechanism of a 2-D plotter (similar to a 3-D printer mechanism) to paint the walls. The electronics subsystem of the robot consists of a master controller [4] Raspberry Pi 3 module that has a camera module fixed on it; the user can input the color of his preference to be painted on the wall and with the help of signals processing the camera module can capture the image of the wall to identify the wall dimensions. The research paper [5] reported on the conceptual design of an automatic wall painting machine, with a paint sprayer. The robot frame is set on castor wheels; the vertical motion of the paint sprayer was achieved by using a threaded rod, which is attached to a stepper motor which converts the rotational motion of the shaft of the motor into linear motion. Thus it enables the paint sprayer to move up or down. A compressor is used to supply the paint to the spray rotor end. The author in [6] proposed the design of an interior wall painting machine. This machine is portable, consisting of a conveyor shaft, spray gun, an air tank or compressor, and a controller, to control the operations of the pneumatic machine. This machine uses a chain drive for transmission of power, and motion from a DC motor to the lead screw, for the vertical motion of the paint sprayer.
In the research work [7] the author showed the mode of a roller-based painting robot, which has a paint roller attached to an end of the arm that is anchored to the mobile base. The paper was able to show the working of the lifting process using flowcharts; it has a foldable structure with a weight of less than 3.5kg. The robot can paint at a rate of 0.15 m2/min is available at an affordable price.
n the research paper [8], Aris developed a full-scale mechanism for the painting of ceilings. The mechanical design consists of a positioning module and an end-effector module. The positioning module contains X-Y-Z modules. For X and Y modules movement, the chain-sprocket mechanism is used and for the Z module movement, the ball-screw mechanism is utilized. The End-effector module is the one that holds the spray gun. The Robot had a working envelope of (0.84 x 0.72 x 1.22) m3 is reported. Unfortunately, the system can only paint the ceilings and there is no information revealed about its mobility. In [9], the author presented a wall-climbing robot, for hull painting; this autonomous robot can do self-painting through intelligent control and vision system. The paint system of the robot is controlled by a solenoid valve and a pressure pump. For painting, the robot uses permanent adsorption and AC servo motor to drive, so that the robot can be adsorbed on the magnetic surface and move around. The prototype of an FPGA-based wall painting service robot is discussed in [10]. The master controller used in this robot is [11] Altera DE2 development board; for climbing walls, this robot used a suspension support system; obstacles like windows were avoided by an infrared emitting diode, and an NPN phototransistor; magnetic sensor was used to detect metallic windowpane frames. In the research paper [12], the author presented a painting robot with monocular vision-based parameter estimation for mobile robotic painting in which he measured different parameters by using a single camera, a laser level (LL), and four single-point laser distance sensors (LDSs) to get the parameters such as wall plane equation, the position of the paint-start point to get an accurate and precise painting by the robot. To find the relative distance between the robot and the wall, the single image measurement was used. That is measuring the distance of the wall using a single camera, this is also called a monocular vision-based system. In this paper, we propose an Autonomous wall painting robot design that is unique, efficient, reliable, compactable, portable, and cost-effective.
Conclusion
The design, implementation, analysis, and testing of an autonomous wall painting robot to be used for painting the interior walls of the building is presented in this research work. The robot uses a sprayer attached to a tank filled with paint. The robot itself adjusted from the walls using an ultrasonic sensor. The cascade lift is used for adjusting height according to the wall and it also enables us to have compatibility and portability. The criteria for system design had been outlined and the prototype was implemented and tested. However, there is much scope for system improvement in the future to increase the painting rate and simplify the system design.
Acknowledgment
We take this opportunity to express our profound gratitude and deep regards to HuT Labs, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham which provided guidance and space for us to complete this work.
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FULL Paper PDF file:
Autonomous Wall Painting RoboBibliography
author
Year
2020
Title
Autonomous Wall Painting Robo
Publish in
2020 International Conference for Emerging Technology (INCET), Belgaum, India, 2020, pp. 1-6,
Doi
10.1109/INCET49848.2020.9154020.
PDF reference and original file: Click here
Somayeh Nosrati was born in 1982 in Tehran. She holds a Master's degree in artificial intelligence from Khatam University of Tehran.
Professor Siavosh Kaviani was born in 1961 in Tehran. He had a professorship. He holds a Ph.D. in Software Engineering from the QL University of Software Development Methodology and an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Chelsea.
Nasim Gazerani was born in 1983 in Arak. She holds a Master's degree in Software Engineering from UM University of Malaysia.
