Autonomous Painting Robot concept from the year 2000

Innovative thinking?

This is a sketch from about 20 years ago that demonstrates an autonomous painting machine. Absolutely amusing......

Imagine being able today to sketch a machine for the next 10 years. At today's pace of change it will not be easy at all.

So what is the story of this sketch? here we go....

Last weekend while cleaning the warehouse, I came across a stack of binders from my engineering studies. I Hold one of the binders from the year 2000, examines its contents and then finds a course project that I think was called "innovation and creative thinking". It was hard to forget this course and specially this presentation because it was the joke of the Cohort from the "Crazy Guy".

At that time, PowerPoint was not yet common and we used an overhead projector. So, readers of the 1960s till 1985s may have come to see this. Those of you born after 1985 seem to have missed the experience or maybe not :)

Over Head projector looked like:

And the slides were transparent:

This is how the presentation looked like. yes you had to stand and manually change the slides! We used white papers between the slides in order to keep them safe. You don't want to have a "splitting struggle" while presenting. :)

If we look at the main drawing:

Main components:

·       Vehicle Chassis, 3 wheels. One for steering and two for drive.

·       Motoman Robotic Arm with drives and panel. A smart vision system mounted on the arm for process feedback and quality.

·       Paint tank with pump

·       HMI with keyboard and a ball mouse

·       Smart navigation systems using thermal cameras and short-range laser radars. (nowadays known as LIDAR)

·       Smart electro-mechanical bumpers for extra safety in case of collision.

·       External power supply by cable. Although batteries are much developed but even today we don't have ones with capacity for an industrial robotic arm (not a small collaborative robot)

Here are some of the component slides:

Motoman Robotic painting arm

Smart bumpers

Thermal detection systems

Short range laser radar

If we search the web today we still don't find much commercialized autonomus painting robots but I believe that till 2025 we will have a lot of cost effective solutions.

In order to realize the complexity of such solution, check a great article which was published in the IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE ? june 2018:

One of the leading startups in this field is Transforma Robotics from Singapore.

Here you can watch a 45 seconds demo video:

To summarise it….. good academic memories..... Although my presented concept was not considered seriously. For me it feels great realizing how much it was innovative.

My tip is always to be different thinker and be disruptive. Most chances people may laugh or call you crazy. They are not bad people, they are just SLOW. It will take them 10 – 20 years to understand the "stupid" sketch you've just drafted.

Welcome to the 4th industrial revolution where all borders fall and good luck with the future of work and specially your personal unpredictable career path......