Robotic power trowel under development

For the past few years, R & D division specialists of Lithuanian company "ROBOTUS" have been working on a single project. The aim was to create a robotic power trowel, which can operate with minimal human supervision, make the floor finishing process more efficient, less burdensome, and requiring less human resources.


Current industrial floor finishing process takes a several or even more hours for workers to use trowels while hardening and finishing screed of concrete. Therefore, the work is difficult and tiresome. During the process, people are exposed to vibration and in consequence, muscle diseases may develop.
Automatic control system developed in R & D division can be installed on any standard hydraulic power trowel, thus making it capable for automatic floor finishing. Complex robot operating conditions like fast-changing train surface parameters and the unusual movement principle of the trowel-like machine were the biggest problems for engineers while developing control algorithms and systems for the robot.
In order for the robot to be able to work both indoors and outdoors, accurate laser positioning system was chosen for the navigation. In addition, positioning system is easily transported, can cover large working area and is quickly calibrated on the work site. Moreover, accuracy achieved by this system allows to use it not only for robotic trowel navigation, but also for floor level and other measurements.
Furthermore, one operator is sufficient to maintain and control several robotic trowels. The operator’s task is to select working area on the computer screen with other parameters, such as trowelling trajectory type, riding speed and robot will carry out assigned tasks. The system is designed in such a way that tasks for the robot may be assigned remotely over LAN or WAN. All information about trowelling progress or important technological parameters may be seen on the PC on operator’s request.
The Company continues in actively developing an automated trowelling system installed on Whiteman STX 45 hp hydraulic power trowel. In near future it is expected that new features such as automatic obstacle detection dependent path planning or conditional speed control would be added to the system. These features would certainly make robot service for human operator even simpler.
Source: JSC "ROBOTUS"
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