If you’ve ever painted a room you know that getting every nook and cranny is pretty difficult and Tim Allen help you if you have hardwood or carpet. The tarp alone costs more than the paint. Now, thanks to MIST, your robot can manage the entire job, slapping paint up like a robotic Jackson Pollock.
The robot uses mapping technology and a sort of elevator-like neck to spray up and down walls. The team, which hails from the University of Waterloo, has finished their prototype and it’s called Maverick. The team has experience working at multiple big names including Apple and Facebook. It includes Shubham Aggarwal, Utkarsh Saini, Baraa Hamodi, Hammad Mirza, and Dhruv Sharma.
This is just the beginning for Maverick. The team plans on adding other features that make it easier to use.
“We actually plan on mounting a camera behind the sprayer so that it follows the sprayer up and down, and hence can use image processing to make decisions about whether to actuate the spray or not. We’ve already implemented this logic in software and even have a paint quality detection algorithm. That being said, we haven’t mounted the camera just yet as seen in this video,” the team said.
As you can see below the project involves a platform, arm, and spray system. The robot maps the room and then rolls around, hitting spots that are supposed to be painted and avoiding spots that aren’t. Obviously you’re going to want to tape up some spots but for the most part Maverick will blast your walls with a few layers of paint in the time it would take you to go down to the paint store.
I’ve reached out to the team for more information on their project but until then enjoy their jaunty video below. I, for one, welcome our robotic spraying overlords.