A study on automated mobile painting robot with permanent magnet wheels for outer plate of ship

Painting on outer plate of ship is one of the dangerous parts for building ships, because it is conducted by human workers in high altitudes with painting equipment. In this paper, we propose an automatic painting robot that uses a permanent magnet wheel and vision system. This robot can move on the outer plate of the ship vertically and horizontally using a permanent magnet wheel. In experiment, we made a prototype to test autonomous tracking ability along the surface of vertical walls and performance for the painting tasks.