Development and Practical Use of a Tower Interior Surface Coating Robot

This paper deals with the development of a fully automatic tower interior surface coating robot and results of its application to the spray-coating work at an actual construction site. The coating subjects were the partition walls of reinforced concrete, angular-shaped product silos at a flour mill currently under construction in Tokyo. Of the total coating area of about 24,000 m2, an area of about 20,000 m2, excluding the surfaces of hopper and the area immediately above it, was envisaged to be coated by this robot. Conventionally, coating work at elevated places, as in the jobsite mensioned, has been performed manually with the aid of scaffolding and gonbdola, forcing the workers to be engaged in coating work under closed, harsh working conditions. This coating robot has been developed not only to solve this problem, but also to perform good quality spray-coating, automatically enabling substantial labor saving. This robot system provides a possibility not only of the coating of tower-shaped structures like the soils as in the given example, but also for automated work, such as the coating of exterior wall surfaces of buildings, inspection and maintenance. The necessity for automation of work in the construction industry has increased due to elderly skilled workers and a deficiency of young workers.