Development of smart wall painting robot

Abstract

Wall panting is very important for decoration of all Egyptian houses and is usually done by hiring a human painter. However, wall painting is a tedious, exhausting. boring and hazardous for humans. Therefore, there is a global need to build a robot that can help people to improve their life by having higher quality painting besides saving health of labor and time. Wall painting process is an ideal candidate for automation. Though few trials had been made to develop a wall painting robot, but no product had matured yet to the stage of commercialization. In this project, we carry on the mechanics design of a new painting robot using roller for indoor wall painting. The main criteria for our design are simplicity, rigidity, stability, user friendly interface, light weight, speed and cost This robot will paint walls by using a roller fed with paint from a pump. The roller scans the wall vertically while the robot mobile base will move autonomously inside the room walls to finish painting. The robot consists of a differential drive base over which is attached a linear cascaded lift mechanism, which lifts a painting x-y stage to fixed heights of the wall. The x-y stage then scans a fixed area of the wall with its tip fitted with standard pump fed roller. The design is made such that the heavier lift mechanism is subject to less motion and then less wear compared to the light x-y stage. The robot is implemented with simple control and user interface. The vertical scan of the robot is completed in 27 seconds which resulted in a painting rate of 3 m2/min and the robot weighs 60 kg which ensures its portability for indoor applications.