Airbrush robotic painting system: Experimental validation of a colour spray model

4noThis research is focused on developing a robotic painting system for artistic and graphic applications by means of an anthropomorphic robot equipped with an airbrush. Firstly, we introduce a mathematical colour spray model, based on a radially symmetric Gaussian distribution of colour intensity within the spray cone. Then, we present an experimental characterization of colour intensity in a spot, by varying the distance between airbrush and target surface and the spraying time. The experimental results of this pilot study validate the paint intensity model and provide the basis for further investigations.reservedmixedScalera, Lorenzo*; Mazzon, Enrico; Gallina, Paolo; Gasparetto, AlessandroScalera, Lorenzo; Mazzon, Enrico; Gallina, Paolo; Gasparetto, Alessandr

A survey on inspecting structures using robotic systems

Advancements in robotics and autonomous systems are being deployed nowadays in many application domains such as search and rescue, industrial automation, domestic services and healthcare. These systems are developed to tackle tasks in some of the most challenging, labour intensive and dangerous environments. Inspecting structures (e.g. bridges, buildings, ships, wind turbines and aircrafts) is considered a hard task for humans to perform and of critical importance since missing any details could affect the structure’s performance and integrity. Additionally, structure inspection is time and resource intensive and should be performed as efficiently and accurately as possible. Inspecting various structures has been reported in the literature using different robotic platforms to: inspect difficult to reach areas and detect various types of faults and anomalies. Typically, inspection missions involve performing three main tasks: coverage path planning, shape, model or surface reconstruction and the actual inspection of the structure. Coverage path planning ensures the generation of an optimized path that guarantees the complete coverage of the structure of interest in order to gather highly accurate information to be used for shape/model reconstruction. This article aims to provide an overview of the recent work and breakthroughs in the field of coverage path planning and model reconstruction, with focus on 3D reconstruction, for the purpose of robotic inspection

Coverage path planning for complex structures inspection using unmanned aerial vehicle UAV)

The most critical process in the inspection is the structure coverage which is a time and resource intensive task. In this paper, Search Space Coverage Path Planning (SSCPP) algorithm for inspecting complex structure using a vehicular system consisting of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is proposed. The proposed algorithm exploits our knowledge of the structure model, and the UAV’s onboard sensors to generate coverage paths that maximizes coverage and accuracy. The algorithm supports the integration of multiple sensors to increase the coverage at each viewpoint and reduce the mission time. A weighted heuristic reward function is developed in the algorithm to target coverage, accuracy, travelled distance and turning angle at each viewpoint. The iterative processes of the proposed algorithm were accelerated exploiting the parallel architecture of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). A set of experiments using models of different shapes were conducted in simulated and real environments. The simulation and experimental results show the validity and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm