Paint Robots have been in the industrial for decades mainly to improve painting quality. There are numerous brand of robots in the market that can be used for autonomous painting. However, most of them required permanent fixtures and positioning of robot arm in a fixed working area. Having the robot arm to move around is a big no-no, reason being is the accuracy of the positioning, fire hazard handling and the navigation technology.
Aerospace Malaysia Innovative Centre (AMIC) acknowledged the challenge and lined up the top technical team from the particular industrial players to look into this matter. It’s an honour for DF Automation and Robotics R&D to join force with the technical expert from Spirit Aerosystem Malaysia and Universiti Malaya, to deliver the first of it’s kind mobile painting robot in Malaysia.
The project involved the integration of Zalpha-TS-03E trackless navigation AGV and Universal Robot UR10 together with Keyence camera vision system for positioning of the painting gun at the tip of the robot arm. With the flexibility of Zalpha-TS-03E and Navwiz operating system, the integration went smoothly and efficiently shorten the time spent for hardware integration. The team is able to focus in improving the paint spraying algorithm without worrying much on the hardware limitation and programming. DF Automation and Robotics Zalpha trackless AGV have also went through a series of review by international fire hazard expert to justify for it’s operation inside the paint room.
The project collaboration takes 6 months before it’s being deployed to the site for stress test and fine tuning. The project have been visited by Spirit Aerosystem global CEO, Mr Tom Gentile and Malaysia Prime Minister, YAB Tun Dr. Mahathir on December 2018 at Putra Jaya, Malaysia. The project have also been awarded the “G-Mark” good design award from Japan, for it’s innovative idea to improve safety of the operation environment and it’s breakthrough for improving the painting quality of airplane.
