Practical Uses of Painting Robot for Exterior Walls of High -rise Buildings

The robot automates the operation painting on exterior walls of high-rise buildings. The robot is designed to ensure safety during work at high elevations, assure the quality of the coating, enhances efficiency and maintain the privacy of guests in the building. At the Shinjuku Center Building (54 above-ground storeys, 220 m in height, 100,000 m' of coating) one of Tokyo's high-rise buildings, an operation to paint the exterior walls has been in progress since September 1988 using this robot. The surface of the building is very complex and therefore presented significant testing conditions for the implementation of robotized operation. This paper gives an outline of the painting robot and describes a number of new experiences and the measures implemented to cope with them during the actual execution of the work. 1. HISTORY OF DEVELOPMENT At present, this second prototype is in operation, and the site chosen for this test was the Shinjuku Center Building, one of Japan's high-rise buildings. It is a prominent 54-storey building completed in 1979. There are also 5 storeys underground and the total height is 220 m. The exterior walls are precast resin concrete panels with an acrylic urethane coating. The total area to be painted excluding glass was 47,700 m2 (including 7,000 m2 on the inner surfaces of guide rails ). The robot applied both an undercoat and a finish coat so the total sprayed area was 95 ,400 m2. As shown in Photo 1, the wall surface of the building is very complex, which complicated the plan for painting using the robot.