The Study on the Integrated Control System for Curtain Wall Building Cleaning Robot

The industry's interest in building façade maintenance is rising with the growing number of new high-rise buildings in the metropolises. The conventional method of cleaning the façade of high-rise buildings relies on the use of ropes, gondolas, and the winch system involving human labor. Recently the building maintenance unit (BMU) has been developed and has been applied to building maintenance to prevent safety accidents and to ensure high work efficiency. Diverse robot systems are being applied to building maintenance globally, including in Germany, the United States, and France. In South Korea, the built-in guided robot system was developed. This paper deals with an integrated control system of built-in guided robot system to ensure consistent and stable control. This control system is considered its unique characteristics as a building façade cleaning work. The integrated control system proposed in this paper performs cleaning work in three steps: preparation, cleaning, and return to the initial position, with each module consisting of the robot system performing its task sequentially and independently at each step. In addition, the robot system makes up a network composed mainly of VMR to ensure smooth and stable communication among the different modules. The integrated control system proposed in this paper was applied to the built-in guided robot system for performance verification.