A System for Automatic Marking of Floors in Very Large Spaces

This paper describes a system for automatic marking of floors. Such systems can be used for example when marking the positions of stands for a trade fair or exhibition. Achieving a high enough accuracy in such an environment, characterized by very large open spaces, is a major challenge. Environmental features will be much further away then in most other indoor applications and even many outdoor applications. A SICK LMS 291 laser scanner is used for localization purposes. Experiments show that many of the problems that are typically associated with the large beam width of ultra sonic sensors in normal indoor environments manifest themselves here for the laser because of the long range. The system that is presented has been in operation for almost two years to date and has been used for every exhibition in the three main exhibition halls at the Stockholm International Fair since then. The system has speeded up the marking process significantly. For example, what used to be a job for two men over eight hours now takes one robot monitored by one man four hours to complete.