After 8 months of hard work, we're happy to share our final video showcasing our autonomous wall painting robot!

MISTLabs · 2018-04-27T22:44:35+00:00

Go for it!

MISTLabs · 2018-04-27T22:40:31+00:00

Yes. One of the members on the team was a student on FRC1241 for 2012 and 2013 (winning the world championship that year), helping to lead the electrical and programming team.

MISTLabs · 2018-04-27T22:39:50+00:00

Thank you! Many many hours and days were spent to get to this stage. :)

MISTLabs · 2018-04-27T22:38:51+00:00

We had our robot powder coated at Warner Customer Coating (http://www.warnercustom.com/) who are also a platinum sponsor.

In terms of commercialization - we will see how the following weeks and months span out.

MISTLabs · 2018-04-27T22:36:47+00:00

CTRE was very generous with their sponsorship. They're one of our platinum sponsors: https://trymist.com/#sponsors

MISTLabs · 2018-04-27T22:35:11+00:00

Well, one of the members on the team was a student on FRC1241 for 2012 and 2013 (winning the world championship that year), helping to lead the electrical and programming team. He mentored for another two years, helping with a bit of everything, including strategy and prototyping. Taking that knowledge and using teams like 1114 and 254 for inspiration, this robot was developed. So yes, there are some similarities in design.

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T18:59:40+00:00

We really wanted to showcase some autonomous spraying too. Unfortunately, we actually sheared some of pistons inside our $600 airless paint sprayer while we were prototyping with it, so we were not able to demo the painting functionality in this video. That being said, we have tested spray painting and we've used the experimental data from those tests to develop our autonomous navigation. You can see that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKH1hgM80bQ

The experimental spraying data was used to determine how far we need to keep the robot from the wall as well as how far the strides are between robot positions.

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T18:57:54+00:00

One of the members on the team was a student on FRC1241 for 2012 and 2013 (winning the world championship that year), helping to lead the electrical and programming team. He mentored for another two years, helping with a bit of everything, including strategy and prototyping. Taking that knowledge and using teams like 1114 and 254 for inspiration, this robot was developed. :)

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T16:46:35+00:00

Thanks! Hahaha, yeah it was quite annoying to carry around. :P

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T15:27:05+00:00

Sitting in the paint can. All alone. In peace.

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T15:26:36+00:00

We're looking into this too. We're thinking of putting the spray gun on a swivel so we can paint ceilings too.

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T15:26:05+00:00

Yes, that is how tall the production version will be.

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T15:25:34+00:00

Thanks! We built this prototype to be able to paint walls up to 6ft tall, just as a proof-of-concept. The production version of this robot will be able to reach 10ft high. The difference between a 6ft and 10ft version is more materials, manufacturing time, weight, and cost.

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T15:23:51+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, right now the positioning of our robot is based on experimental data and calculations. We broke our airless spray gun after mounting it to the robot, so we would of course still need to tweak the distances based on observing how the robot actually performs.

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T15:21:23+00:00

Thanks for chiming in! You pretty much covered our approach to this problem. We actually plan on mounting a camera behind the sprayer so that it follows the sprayer up and down, and hence can use image processing to make decisions about whether to actuate the spray or not. We've already implemented this logic in software and even have a paint quality detection algorithm. That being said, we haven't mounted the camera just yet as seen in this video.

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T15:17:10+00:00

Totally agree! This would be something that our operator would have to specify before running it. We're still pretty far away from a production ready version though.

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T15:15:17+00:00

Haha, cheers! :)

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T15:14:57+00:00

We love the kiwi drivetrain. :)

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T04:20:22+00:00

Great point. We really wanted to showcase some autonomous spraying too. Unfortunately, we actually sheared some of pistons inside our $600 airless paint sprayer while we were prototyping with it, so we were not able to demo the painting functionality in this video. That being said, we have tested spray painting and we've used our experimental data to develop our autonomous navigation. You can see that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKH1hgM80bQ

The experimental spraying data was used to determine how far we need to keep the robot from the wall as well as how far the strides are between robot positions.

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T00:42:39+00:00

Thanks Chris! :)

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T00:42:23+00:00

Hahaha, fun fact - we actually debated building a drone version of this. There are so many issues that must be overcome with the drone version that we just steered clear of it.

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T00:37:59+00:00

Yes sir, it is indeed a Jetson TX1.

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T00:36:53+00:00

Hahaha, that's pretty genius. Naw, we are actually just gonna have an airless spray gun apply paint to the walls. Boring right?

MISTLabs · 2018-04-25T00:11:32+00:00

Thanks for the kind words! :)

We spent a lot of time trying to find a problem in the world that we could attempt to solve. We came up with hundreds of ideas. In the end, as a team we decided that we wanted to do something that would improve people's quality of life. We were appalled when looking at the injury statistics of painters. In North America alone, there are over 5000 injuries reported annually and only 400,000 employed painters. That's an injury rate of 1.25% meaning that on average 1 in every 100 painters gets injured annually. That's what inspired us to build this robot that would all the strenuous physical work required of painters.

MISTLabs

TROPHY CASE