Adaptive control of construction robots in surface treatment

Basic surface treatment tasks on construction sites that can be performed by robots include the spraying, cleaning, and finishing of surfaces. All tasks require that force exerted at the end-effector of the manipulator be properly controlled. In this paper, the force control problem in spraying is studied. The paper shows that an unpredictable jet force causes the end-effector to diverse from its desired trajectory. The interface between the end-effector of the robot and the jet force is modelled as soft contact because both force error and displacement of the end-effector are measurable. Therefore, the force control problem is simplified to the position control problem. The proposed control scheme, using a position-force adaptive controller, can be applied to many spraying tasks despite the different nature of the operations.<>