2020 6th International Conference on Advanced Computing & Communication Systems (ICACCS)

Automated Exterior Wall Painting Robot

Using Raspberry Pi
Bhuvaneswari S Ashlin Jinushia R
Department of ECE, Department of ECE,
Chennai Institute of Technology, Chennai-600069, Chennai Institute of Technology,
Tamil Nadu, India Chennai, India.
sbhuvaneswari@citchennai.net ashlinjinushiar@citchennai.net

Madhavan K, Thandapani T
Department of CSE, Department of ECE,
Chennai Institute of Technology, Chennai-600069, Chennai Institute of Technology,
Tamil Nadu, India Chennai, India.
madhavank@citchennai.net thadapanit@citchennai.net

Abstract— This paper aims to design and develop an while doing external wall painting robot ,To provide user
Automated Wall Painting Robot which helps to reduce manual friendly control application, Normal painting by human is
efforts on painting and accomplish cost effective painting causing severe accident while doing external wall painting to
accessories. Here we have proposed a robot controlled via avoid accident painting robot is used .
Raspberry Pi board. The autonomous robot can be controlled In existing method they have used the microcontroller of
using simple python program. It is used to eliminate the ARDUINO. It is the hardware used to control the all
human exposure in dangerous environments and very effective component and it produces the control signal and PWM
on time management. Also it completes a painting job without signals to motors. The sensor used to control the direction of
an error. At last, it is expected that the conceptual model of the robot and control the moving direction; digital line sensor is
wall painting robot would be efficiently used in various home used .DC motors can run in bi directions based upon the
and industry applications in wall finishing and maintenance of polarity of current through the motor. It is used in cutting of
other giant architectural and civil structures. magnetic flux mechanism. These motor acclimated to move
Keywords— Building Automation; Robotics; Wall Painting; the robot forward and reverse direction. The rechargeable DC
Human Safety; Raspberry Pi, Pulse Width Modulation battery is used to give the proper voltage to the components
and motors. Arduino microcontroller runs only one program
I. INTRODUCTION again and again and it delays the painting process. It does not
In current era we have multiple technologies to increase support advanced programming languages like python or ruby
the robotic painting automation in various industries. to enable faster development.
Embedded system design is a used for many types of product
design by implementing the software and hardware with input
and output devices along with microprocessors. The main idea
of this automation is to provide exterior wall painting
automatically with the help of robot.. The main idea to make
the robot to move easily along the walls and apply paint
smoothly. People can avoid inhaling the toxic chemical while
doing interior painting and also reduce the amount of time
taken to complete the entire painting work. The advanced
robots are accurate and deliver the results with exact
thicknesses. Many creators have an idea of inventing robots
which will create works of art, instead of usual painting it
makes them more creative. Others have probe for ways to
form the robots economical and used for commercial purpose
in places like interior painting.
Automation and robotics have entered various pasture of
the construction industry, and painting work.[5] The
traditional painting of the wall buildings which is carried out Fig 1. Arduino Layout
using platform has proved to be expensive. It is very unsafe to
involve working preferable heights. The main objectives of
the paper are painting chemical can cause severe damage to The Arduino Mega microcontroller board depends on
lever to save human life this robots are preferred, Paint the Atmega 1280. It consists of multiple digital input/output pins.
wall automatic in perfect manner, To avoid accident of human In I/O pins 14 can be utilized as pulse width modulation

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 2020 6th International Conference on Advanced Computing & Communication Systems (ICACCS)
outputs, sixteen analog inputs, four UARTs, a sixteen MHz
crystal oscillator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP
header, and a reset button as shown in figure 1. To get started
the complete support to the microcontroller is simply connect
with a USB cable or power is given to AC-to-DC converter. It
is used to control all the sensors and motors to give the control
signals (input and output signal).To give input to module and
fetch the output to corresponding modules.
Fig 2. Block diagram
Digital write condition in Arduino the motor can be
controlled by sensing the input from digital line follower it
sense the input black as 1 and white as 0, The input is given to
the Arduino by using digital write condition. The motor is
turned on by using high condition; the required voltage is
given to the motor driver with the help of batteries in order to
run the motor smooth manner as shown in figure 2. The main
command is given with the help of Arduino, by using digital
read easily.
II. LITERATURE SURVEY
In this paper they discussed about paint copter that is
autonomous UAV spray painting on 3D surfaces. They
established paint stimulator for pre visualization. Their
experimental results show that it is accurate to do exact
modifications to the target surface. They demonstrate the
computational actuality interface to define the paint copter
carrying the multi colored pattern on 3 dimensional surfaces
[1].
Here they have discussed about Autonomous UAV spray
painting. The incentive of the paper is how to styled 3D
surface painting and how they avoid without any ladders. In
this paper paint copter is used and while the robots are doing
the spray painting it described more challenges as need to
generate the robotic painting commands for live robot to
carries out the painting. The self controlled spray painting by
the unmanned aerial vehicle providing skilled line painting on
a 3 dimensional surfaces [2].
In this paper human efforts are replaced by automated
robot painting to advance the efficiency and to reduce the
painting cost. Here they used a single camera and four laser
sensors to sense the range. The position between the robot and
the painting surface is identified through a single image
distance calculation .As per developed model, the wall plane
equation and the position of the paint-start point were
achieved by robot manipulator. The parameter estimation
about less than 10mm and medians of error less than 6mm and
they are comparing the results of accuracy to the existing
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method. The future scope is based on to improve the
measurement accuracy [3].
Here they have used paper based strain sensors. It is very
cost effective, simple, equipment free. Normally printing
paper is made with poly dimethylsiloxane immersed with
heptane. They are taking some tests with gauge factor using
different sensors and identified compressed strain sensor has
better sensitivity. In robotics they have continuously
monitored in joint angles that is capable of folding detection
over a wider angles. It has been attached to our finger, that
strain sensor should be visualized bending and stretching
motions. As future scope they are approaching to implement
in weak motion monitoring of robots and humans [4].
Here the author presented based on motion precision
dynamic feed forward control. It’s very hard to give the
accurate dynamic feed forward control and coefficients. In this
method the motion precision is identical to acceleration,
velocity and position of the dynamic model. They are using an
atlas method to control the parameters of closed loop feedback
control system. To recognize an efficient feed forward system
it’s based on completely dynamic model. Here both the
simulation and experimental solution give the efficiency of the
controller with dynamic feed forward compensation is better
comparatively without feed forward compensation. It’s very
useful for controlling the robots in industrial field [5].
III. PROPOSED METHOD
The proposed methodology will build a robot that you
can program to move around using simple Python commands.
The first thing you will want to do is to connect your motor
controller board to your Raspberry Pi, the battery pack, and
your two motors for testing. The instructions here we are using
the Dual H Bridge DC Step up Motor Driver Controller Board
which is very similar to the motor controller boards. The
motors require more power than the Raspberry Pi can provide.
Therefore, you will use four AA batteries to power them. The
board used in this project needs to be wired to the Raspberry
Pi. Other boards may connect differently, and some boards can
simply be placed onto the Raspberry Pi. We want to calculate
motor based direction motor and also we have to check which
way they are driving the direction to go front and back.
IV. HARDWARE DESIGN
The proposed system includes hardware’s mentioned below.
Fig 3. Raspberry Pi interconnect with Sensors and Driver
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 2020 6th International Conference on Advanced Computing & Communication Systems (ICACCS)
A. Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi is a perfect pocket size chipset for
developing a robot and it is really economical. It is as
powerful as a smart phone robotics. It can do all the heavy
calculation rapidly. It can be connected easily to a lot of
actuators and sensors. Raspberry board have lot of protocols to
connect other hardware devices like serial port, spi or i2c and
its very flexible for the most of the device used as shown in
figure 4.
Fig 4. Raspberry Pi Board
B. IR Sensors Configuration with Raspberry Pi
IR sensor modules can be connected with Raspberry Pi
board via GPIO pin out as per below figure 5. Sensors can be
powered by providing 5V, it’s a positive pin, Ground should
be connected to minus pin and B pin should be connected to
Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins. Pins are numerically established
which usual order is given on the board.
Fig 5. IR sensor interconnect with Raspberry Pi Board
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Objects are sensed using IR LED lines from the sensors .It
will reflect over the objects in front of the sensors.
C. DC Motor
In DC motor the current is passed through, it spins
continuously in one direction until the current stops. It’s
absolutely marked as + or – pins as shown in the figure 6. To
reverse the direction of the motor it can change the two wires.
PWM is known to managing the endurance of an electronic
pulse. Here the motors should be classified the brush as a
water wheel and electrons as the flowing droplets of water.
Voltage fluctuation damages the motors frequently. If it is
controlled through PWM the motors will last much longer and
be more dependable.
Fig 6. DC Motor
D. Rack and Pinion Mechanism
The rack and pinion is a type of definite controller that
consist a pair of gears which change rotational movement into
linear movement; there is a basic rack for every pair as shown
in the figure 7. This basic rack had a contour of the assoicate
gear of infinite pitch radius.
Fig 7. Rack and Pinion
E. L2993D Motor Driver Connection
L293D component and the motors should be tested after
testing the IR sensor modules. The component should be
powered by attaching the positive and negative pins of the
circuit. Here there are using 9v battery and connect the –pin to
the ground of the raspberry pi board as displayed in the below
figure 8.
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 2020 6th International Conference on Advanced Computing & Communication Systems (ICACCS)
A. Python REPL
Python is a very powerful artificial coding programming
language which uses a simple syntax, and allows programmers
to use fewer lines of code than would be possible in languages
like assembly, C, or Java. We need interpreter to reads Python
files and executes the code as shown in the figure 9. Python
REPL is employed here and its rather like the instruction to
enter the commands.

Fig 8. Raspberry pi connection diagram

The rotation and direction of the two motors can be

controlled by the inputs given by Raspberry Pi board. In GPIO Fig 9.Python Perl
terminals of the board has four output which is pinned with the
leads of the motors. They are powered by 9 volt batteries. B. Visual Studio
Based on below inputs mentioned below motors can be
The visual studio is the software used to test the code, the
controlled by Raspberry Pi board. Each and every motor
tool which is used to control the robot manually. It only used
movement can be authorized by giving HIGH/LOW signals
to test the module and display the module of working as
via two GPIO Pins in Raspberry pi board.
shown in the figure 10. Example the robot is forward to
TABLE I. RASPBERRY PI INPUT CONTROL display forward to verify the state of the robot and it also used
to control the robot manually.
Input A Input B Motor State

High Low Turns clockwise

Low High Turns anti-

clockwise

High High Braking occurs

Low Low Braking occurs

As shown in table 1, here we have given HIGH and LOW

order signals, which is mean that

x If the signal should be 5V or digital 1 it represented

as HIGH. Fig 10.Visual Studio IDE
x If the signal should be 0V or digital 0 it is represented
as LOW. VI. PAINTING MECHANISM

V. SOFTWARE TOOLS A. Overview of Painting Style

Below mentioned software’s are used to develop this
project.

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 2020 6th International Conference on Advanced Computing & Communication Systems (ICACCS)
Fig 11. Overview of Painting Style
B. Submersible Pump
Submersible pump is more capable when comparing it with
a jet pump. It has a complex sealed motor tightly coupled with
the body of the pump. It is immersed in the paint which has to
be pumped. It prevents pump cavity formation and a problem
associated with a high uplift difference between pump and the
paint surface. It pumps the paint to the surface as opposed to
jet pumps having to pull paints.
C. Battery
We have used two 12v Exide Power Safe batteries in our
project. In that one battery is used to run 4 dc motors. Another
one is used for uplift dc motors and horizontal motors.
D. Old Cassette Recorder
It is mainly used to navigate the DC motors in appropriate
direction to cover the painting surface. It is made of 5V DC
motor and it moves depending upon the priority of input
current flows through the device.
E. Painting Brush Module
Painting brush is fixed at the top to paint in horizontal
manner. We are using size 24 inch size brush to paint the wall
as shown in the figure 12. It is connected with submersible
pump to refill the paint from the paint storage place.
Figure 12.Horinzontal Painting Module
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VII. OUTPUT DISCUSSION
Developed modules are tested individually and
interconnected properly to as shown in the figure. Entire robot
setup was tested under controlled environment.
A. Robot Module
.Fig 13.Robot Module
B. Working Algorithm
Below mentioned steps should be followed to control the
developed painting robot.
Step1: initialize motor header
Step2: setup forward motor speed for all dc motors
Step3: setup forward motor speed for all dc motors
Step4: define motor driver pins
Step5: initialize sensor
Step6: setup threshold for sensor
Step7: arrange the motor working manner
Step8: read the sensor value from line follower
Step9: initialize all motor position to zero
Step10: turn on required motors for first iteration
Step11: read all the sensor value
Step12: serial print all sensor value
Step13: if sensor input is black go forward
Step14: turning on uplift dc motor (for one step)
Step15: turning on spray motor
Step16: repeat step 11 to 15
Step17: if left sensor value is white turn right
Step18: if right sensor value is white turn left
Step19: the iteration continues for five times
Step20: if two sensor values is white motor stops
VIII. CONCLUSION
Developed a exterior building wall painting robot to paint
the wall efficiently. It can be used to cover the wall uniformly
and reduce the painting cost of wall. It takes only the initial
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 2020 6th International Conference on Advanced Computing & Communication Systems (ICACCS)
cost to manufacturing. This type of robot used to save the
human life for the injuries to paint the higher position in
apartments and buildings. The paint having some poisonous
some metal it lead some disorder like the respiratory problem
and some skin problems. In our robot to paint the square fit in
2 minutes. But it is only the demo to use brush module for a
future to use the sprayer mechanism to paint the wall to reduce
the time and paint the wall efficiently and precisely. The main
purpose of this robot is used to save human life while doing
external wall painting.

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