WO2021191662A1

WO2021191662A1 - Smart robot for preparation and painting buildings walls

Info

Publication number: WO2021191662A1
Application number: PCT/IB2020/052880
Authority: WO
Inventors: Amirhossein TAVAKOLIAN
Original assignee: Tavakolian Amirhossein
Priority date: 2020-03-26
Filing date: 2020-03-26
Publication date: 2021-09-30

Abstract

The proposed scheme includes a building painting robot which is able to carry out all painting phases for a wall, including priming, smoothing, painting, and drying. It works automatically and has the highest accuracy. Having a camera, distance-meter, and a processor, this robot is able to detect the parts on the wall that are not to be painted. To do so, the robot camera becomes sensitive to a certain color by computer pre-programming. Then some colorful fabric or screens covers the interested parts which are not to be painted. As such, the robot can understand which parts are not to be painted. This robot is intended to be employed in large buildings and projects to enhance the painting accuracy and efficiency.

Description

Smart Robot for preparation and painting buildings walls

This invention includes a kind of building painting robot which can automatically and with the highest accuracy, carry out all phases of a wall painting process from wall preparation, including: priming, smoothing, painting, as well as drying. Having a camera, distance-meter, and a processor, this robot can detect certain parts of the wall, such as the windows, switches and sockets by means of computerized programming. In this case, the robot camera becomes sensitive to a certain color.

Then the interested parts are covered with a colorful fabric and or a screen, so that the robot can detect this certain color so as not to paint the marked parts. Also, the robot moves by four wheels in all directions. The distance-meter sensors have been employed so that the robot can move in a certain distance from the wall. One can use this robot for painting efforts in large building-development projects, such as seminar halls, museums, public buildings, public places and large buildings at all, walls of which are strenuous and are not economical.

The technical field of the invention is related to the [E04D]

According to the search Conducted at the Central Bank for Intellectual Property and International Registration of Patent, the description of the past Inventions is as follows:

Automatic wall painting machine China Patent: CN203383485U

The utility model discloses an automatic wall painting machine. The automatic wall painting machine is characterized in that a rotatable wheel is arranged below a base; a control button is arranged on one side above the base, and a pressure tank is mounted on the other side above the base; a lifting bar is positioned in the middle of the base; a rotating stage is mounted at the top end of the lifting bar; a telescopic arm is fixed and mounted on the rotating stage through an adjuster, two rows of nozzles are arranged at the other end of the telescopic arm, and roller brushes are mounted at the outer ends of the two rows of nozzles; the pressure tank is respectively connected with the two rows of nozzles through a paint conveying pipe; a control circuit board, and a controllable circuit formed by connecting a chargeable battery, the control button, the lifting bar, the telescopic arm and the adjuster are arranged in the base. The wall painting machine realizes automation, not only increases the wall painting speed, but also saves paint, and accordingly reduces the decoration cost.

This invention is a building painting device which moves by means of wheels, and paints by means of an arm. The difference between this invention and our plan is in that our designed robot works intelligently and with the help of a processor which is connected to a computer and is not a mere wall painting device.

Surface spraying and rendering robot for building China Patent: CN104343230A

The invention provides a surface spraying and rendering robot for a building. The robot can be used for automatically spraying and rendering cement mortar, lime mortar, putty mortar and other materials, and can also be used for spraying embossed graphics. The robot is of two structures according to the height of a wall body of the building. The robot is characterized in that a spraying and rendering head is fixed through a transverse and longitudinal moving device and used for accurately moving and spraying and rendering in the transverse and longitudinal directions; the spraying and rendering head is equipped with a camera device; the self-cleaning function is brought, so that the camera shooting picture cannot be influenced by the spraying of mortar, and a worker can remotely monitor the spraying and rendering effect; the spraying thickness is controlled through the swinging angular velocity and moving rate of the spraying head; a spraying and rendering device is equipped with a touch part and a distance sensor which enables uniform coating and rendering, and the efficiency and reliability are higher than manual operation. According to the robot, a plurality of spraying heads or rendering knives can be arranged and switched by program control; different building materials can be loaded; the colorful embossed graphics can be sprayed based on the computer picture; the working scope and route of the robot can be set by the computer program, and the learning can be performed automatically through the teaching program.

The aforementioned invention mostly carries out the mortar and other building materials spraying, and other similar things. It has no dynamic movement aspects and cannot detect interested places for work.

Robot for a work on a wall surface US Patent: US4993913A

A robot for a work on a wall surface comprises a main module, which is constructed of, for example, a moving scaffold, hung by ropes and being capable of moving vertically and horizontally to a desired position on a wall surface, an arm module mounted on the main module and being movable with one or more degrees of freedom with respect to the wall surface, and a wrist module mounted on the foremost end portion of the arm module, having one or more degrees of freedom necessary for the work and including an automatic tool changer for detachably mounting a tool necessary for the work on the wrist module. In one aspect of the invention, fixing devices are provided on both sides of the main module and an exchangeable fixing tool is also detachably mounted on the automatic tool changer for stabilizing the main module during work and moving from one place to another.

This invention is a scaffold-like device which can attach to the walls. However, our design is an intelligent robot which is able to move in all directions, and can perform wall preparation and painting.

Automatic painting system US Patent: US4614164A

An automatic painting system including a non-explosion-proof automatic painting machine which has an arm having a spray gun and an arm housing, the arm and the arm housing being inserted through an opening defined in a side wall of a closed painting booth into the interior of the painting booth.

A hermetically sealing bellows is mounted on and extends between a distal end of the arm and an inner surface of the side wall around the opening therein for protecting a portion of the arm which is slid able with respect to the arm housing from the atmosphere in the painting booth. The interior of the bellows is kept in communication with the atmosphere through the opening in the side wall.

The difference between this invention and our design is in that, this device is only able to perform paint spraying, but our design is able to carry out priming and smoothing too. It can also detect paintable places.

Indoor paint robot China Patent: CN105537039A

The invention discloses an indoor paint robot. The indoor paint robot comprises a supporting member adopting a bar-shaped structure, wherein threaded flexible supports are arranged at the upper end and the lower end of the supporting member; a top suction cap and a bottom suction cap are arranged on the threaded flexible supports; transverse motion rollers are arranged in the middle of the top suction cap and the bottom suction cap; a motor is arranged at a junction of the lower end of the supporting member and the corresponding threaded flexible support; a bar-shaped control panel is arranged on the outer surface of the supporting member, a track is arranged on a longitudinal side of the control panel, a central control system is arranged in the control panel, a USB interface and a power interface are arranged outside the control panel, and a painting device is arranged on the track.

The indoor paint robot is simple and reasonable in structure, lower in cost and can be popularized widely, the supporting member is adopted as the central point, the rigidity of the robot is guaranteed, the transverse rollers capable of moving automatically and transversely are arranged at two ends of the supporting member, so that leftward-rightward motion is met, the longitudinal painting device adopts vertical motion, and requirements for wall painting are met.

This invention is not able to detect the places which should not be painted and cannot smooth the wall. Also, it is not mentioned that whether the robot can move in places which is hard to move, such as besides the pillars. However, our design has the mentioned characteristics.

This invention provides an intelligent building painter which is able to detect and isolate the required places and the surfaces on the wall to paint. It is also able to automatically carry out all stages, including wall preparation, priming, sandpapering, as well as drying.

The main parts include: wheel holder base and wheel controllers, scissor-like (zig zag) retroactive lifter, image processing camera, and robotic arms and various operators connecting to the arm head. This robot has wheels which are able to rotate 360, gyroscope and a distance-meter so that it can move accurately, to paint various surfaces.

It also has a webcam to detect parts which should not be operated, and a robust (computer) processor is employed in this regard. In order to detect the placed which should not be painted, a pre-programming is done and is connected to the robot processor. The build-in camera on the robot can detect a certain color, such as black. The parts which should not be painted, are covered by the mentioned color so that the robot can detect it and will not paint the covered parts. The wall preparation phases are carried out by manually connecting tools, including gun, mortar spray, circular sandpaper, spatula, as well as the dryer which are replaced manually by the operator.

This robot is intended to be employed in large buildings and projects to enhance the painting accuracy and efficiency.

Historically, the small building preparation and painting have been carried out by human workforces, however accomplishing larger projects by human workforces in this regard requires high costs and time.

Employing other methods such as industrial pumps and painting robots require human workforce and a lot of time to define paintable parts, due to their unintelligence. The proposed invention provides a building painting robot which is programmable by a computer. Using a camera, as well as a processor, it is able to detect the paintable parts. Four wheels are applied so that the robot can move in all directions. The distance-meter sensors are employed, so that the robot can move in a certain distance from the wall.

All phases, from the preparation phase to the painting and drying phases for the painted part are carried out by this robot, which is not provided by other similar robots. The only role of the operator in this process is to cover the places which are not to be painted, with a colorful fabric or screen, color of which has been defined for the robot by pre-programming. This robot is employed for industrial instrumentation, as well as for construction and development projects, due to its high accuracy. As well, it is used to repair and paint the buildings and large development projects, since it can increase the efficiency.

This invention is a painting robot for development-construction projects, which is able to intelligently paint various surfaces, such as walls, ceiling, etc. in buildings. It is comprised of three main parts:

The main chassis, including the wheel holder base and the wheel controllers;

Scissor-like (zig zag) refractor lifter; and

Image processing camera and a robotic arm and various operators which are connected to the arm head.

In the robot base are mounted: the wheels, motors, control circuits, distance-meter, and the gyroscope.

Other components include: the wheels, DC motor, motor controller driver, motor driver controller processors, laser distance-meter, linear encoder DC motor, encoder DC motor, camera, robotic arm, paint gun, mortar spray, air compressor, spatula, sandpaper, as well as the dryer.

In jack section, a linear encoder DC motor has been employed to lift the jack (the encoder is used to control the motor rpm) It is the jack which can lift the robotic arm to the height determined by the processor.

The top section of the robot is composed of a webcam to detect parts which are not to be painted. A powerful external processor such as a computer is also used in this section to perform the processing. Albeit, another camera (i.e. Kinect) has been also employed to detect the depth, as well as the ups and downs of the surface.

Robotic arm: The operation of this arm is designed so that various operators (that is, paint gun, mortar spray device, circular sandpaper, as well as the dryer) could be mounted on. At the arm head, there exists a clamp or a rail on which can one manually connect various operators such as sandpaper driver, spatula, mortar spray gun, paint spray gun, as well as the dryer.

The paint gun, mortar spray, and an air compressor are employed to shoot the paint and the mortar. A spatula (to smooth the mortar or the primer), a sandpaper (to make the surfaces smooth and finished), and a dryer (to accelerate the surface drying process) have been employed, too.

Four Omni-direction wheels are used, so that the robot can move in all directions without turning. In order for the robot to move in a certain distance from the wall, distance-meter sensors should be used.

The built-in sensors are employed so that the robot can move in a certain distance from the wall. In addition to the aforementioned sensors, there also exist sensors to detect the distance between the vertical wall and the robot moving wall. Once the robot reaches a given distance with respect to the wall, the robot turns, so that it remains parallel to the wall, thereby it can move parallels with respect to the wall.

Finally, in addition to the aforementioned sensors in previous sections, there also exist two distance-meter sensors which can identify the robot distance from the index, so that it can be determined how much distance the robot has been moved. Furthermore, a gyroscope sensor has been employed, which can detect whether the robot has been gone beyond the given distance from its path.

In order to detect the parts or points that are to be painted, the robot is pre-programmed in a computer, so that the mounted camera on the robot can detect a given color (i.e. black). The parts which are not to be painted are covered with a screen having the given color, so that the robot will not paint them.

Upon the color detection, the next phases are as follows:

Phase 1) First, a layer of white color is sprayed on the wall or other surfaces, in order to cover the dark spots, so that the robot doesn’t consider these spots as the switches and sockets, etc.

Phase 2) the primer is sprayed on the wall by mortar spray gun.

Phase 3) The spatula is used to smooth the primer.

Phase 4) The dryer is used to accelerate the drying process.

Phase 5) The circular sandpaper is employed to make the surfaces uniform and smooth.

Phase 6) A layer of the paint is sprayed on the wall or surfaces, by means of the paint gun.

Phase 7) Another layer of the paint is sprayed on the wall or the surfaces by means of the paint gun.

It should be noted that each phase is fully accomplished, and upon the completion, the operator shifts the robot to the next operation.

Prior to accomplishing above phases, all the parts which are not to be painted, such as switches, sockets, windows, doors, etc. are covered with a fabric or a cover having a certain color, such as black so that the robot detect them with its camera and processor, and will not paint them.

Finally, this robot has a higher accuracy compared to human workforce and can enhance the efficiency in the preparation and painting of building surfaces, which will result in higher quality and cost reduction, and make it suitable for use in development-construction projects.

Higher accuracy in painting the required surfaces, due to its camera and processor

Accomplishing all phases of wall preparation, collectively in a single device

Saving in human workforce

Enhancing the efficiency of painting speed; and.

Enhancing the final quality, due to the lower error factor compared to the human performance.

The drawing show embodiments of the disclosed subject matter for the purpose of illustrating the invention. However, it should be understood that the present application is not limited to the precise arrangements and instrumentalities shown in the drawing, wherein.

Schematic and overall view of the robot, accompanying with its components, in a single illustration

Air compressor, separately

Scissor of electrical double lifter jack, from the top and lateral angle

DC motor, from multiple angles

DC motor driver, separately

Encoder linear DC motor, to lift and lowering the jack

Robot built-in processor view

Omni-direction will and the tire

Jack rail schematic and separately

Bolt near view

Robotic arm, schematically with details

Dryer from 3 angles

Servo-motor illustration, separately

Overall form for mortar spray device, multiple angles

Paint gun with its components

Robot camera

Sliding rail of the arm operator head, in two angles

In the following detailed description, a reference is made to the accompanying drawing that from a part hereof, and in which the specific embodiments that made be practiced in shown by way of illustration. The embodiments are described in sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice the embodiments and it is to be understood that the logical, mechanical and other change may be made without departing from the scope of the embodiments. The following detailed description is therefore not to be taken in a limiting sense.

shows the overall schematic for the device including all parts used in the robot, [Fig. 2] The air compressor, which carry out the paint and other materials spray, [Fig. 3] The electric double lifter jack scissor which lift and lower the device, [Fig. 4] DC motor is used to raise the jack [Fig. 5] The DC motor driver is of electronic-processing motor processor, [Fig. 6] The encoder linear DC motor which is employed to lift and lower the jack has been shown in, [Fig. 7] The processor applies the processing and commands to the device, [Fig. 8] Omni-direction wheels are used to better movement of the robot in all directions, [Fig. 9] The jack rail is required to move the jack, [Fog. 10] A bolt to fasten the wheel to the chassis, [Fig. 11] The robotic arm has been designed so that various operators can be mounted on, [Fig. 12] The dryer has been considered to dry the surfaces, [Fig. 13] The servo-motor has been employed to press the paint gun and or mortar spray, [Fig. 14] Mortar spray device sprays the primer on the wall [Fig. 15] Spray gun that paints the wall, [Fig. 16] Camera detects the parts on the wall that are to be painted, [Fig. 17] The sliding rail on the arm operator head is employed to facilitate and accelerate the replacement of items such as paint gun, mortar spray, etc.

Examples

This robot can be used in large development-construction projects, such as seminal halls, museums, public buildings, public places, and large buildings having large areas whose painting by human is so hard and is not cost-effective.

This robot is employed for industrial instrumentation, as well as for construction and development projects’ machines, due to its high accuracy. As well, it is used to repair and paint the buildings and large development projects, since it can increase the efficiency.

Claims

The intelligent building painting robot is able to detect and isolate the parts and surfaces on the wall that are to be painted. It is also able to accomplish all other phases, including wall preparation, priming, sandpapering, and drying.
According to claim 1, the main components of this robot include: wheel holder base and wheel controller, scissor-like (zig zag) refractor lifter, image processing camera, robotic arm, and various operators attached to the arm head.
According to claim 2, the robot components are as follows: wheels, DC motor, motor control driver, motor driver controller processor, laser distance-meter, encoder linear DC motor, encoder DC. motor, camera, robotic arm, paint gun, mortar spray device, air compressor, spatula, sandpaper, and dryer.
According to claims 2 and 3, the wheels, motors, controller circuits, distance-meters, and gyroscope are mounted on the base section.
According to claims 2 and 3, to lift the jack, both DC motor and encoder are employed.
According to claims 1 and 2, the webcam is used to detect parts that are not to be treated. To do so, a powerful (computer) processor has been employed.
According to claim 2, the robotic arm has been designed sliding. There is a clamp on its head which various operators, such as turning sandpaper, spatula, mortar spray gun, paint spray gun, and dryer can be manually mounted on.
According to claims 3 and 4, employed wheels are of Omni type and can rotate 360.
According to claims 1 and 3, sensors are used to measure the distance. The gyroscope sensor is employed to detect whether the robot does not go out its path.
According to claims 1, 2, 3 and 4, detection of parts that are not to be painted is carried out by pre-programming on a computer. The mounted camera on the robot can detect the given color, such as black. Some colorful screens are placed on these parts so that the robot can detect the given color and will not paint them.
According to claim 10, the robot, first spray a layer of white color on the wall by paint gun to cover the dark spots, so that the robot doesn’t consider these spots as the given points.
According to claims 1 and 2, the wall preparation phases are carried out by manually attaching instrumentations, including: the gun, mortar spray device, turning sandpaper, spatula, and the dryer. The operator manually replaces these parts.