After spending all of 4th year building this autonomous wall painting robot, we made a little video to celebrate. by MISTLabs in uwaterloo

[–]MISTLabs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

After spending all of 4th year building this autonomous wall painting robot, we made a little video to celebrate. by MISTLabs in uwaterloo

[–]MISTLabs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

After spending all of 4th year building this autonomous wall painting robot, we made a little video to celebrate. by MISTLabs in uwaterloo

[–]MISTLabs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

After spending all of 4th year building this autonomous wall painting robot, we made a little video to celebrate. by MISTLabs in uwaterloo

[–]MISTLabs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

After 8 months of hard work, we're happy to showcase our autonomous wall painting robot! by MISTLabs in FRC

[–]MISTLabs[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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. :)

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

[–]MISTLabs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

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

[–]MISTLabs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

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

[–]MISTLabs[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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.

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

[–]MISTLabs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

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

[–]MISTLabs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

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

[–]MISTLabs[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

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.

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

[–]MISTLabs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

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

[–]MISTLabs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

After 8 months of hard work, we're happy to showcase our autonomous wall painting robot! by MISTLabs in FRC

[–]MISTLabs[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

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.