Introduction

The technology presented in the futuristic cartoon, the Jetson’s, includes a panorama of technological fantasies that include flying cars, automatic hair-stylers, robots with artificial intelligence. Although farfetched, the Jetson’s world may be around the corner as advances in Mechatronics, the combination of mechanical engineering and electronic controls, have made purposeful robots, especially autonomous ones a reality. For example, the company iRobot created Roomba, the autonomous vacuum cleaner, making a world of automatic household robots more realistic [1].

Though cleaning robots are popular these days, a Polyurethane applier proves to be a more worthwhile cause. Not only does this robot get rid of the tedium of applying the floor finish, but also protects the user from the harmful fumes one receives from Polyurethane. Polyurethane, a popular hard wood finish that gives wood floors the glossy look, emits potentially harmful fumes that can lead to lung, eye, nose and throat irritation [2]. If a robot instead takes the place of a human, contact with the fumes would obviously be minimized.

Moving, or rather the plans for the motions, starts with a zigzag pattern (fig.1) that covers most of the open space of the floor, followed by a wall-following program (fig.2) that allows the robot to cover up the missed edges. However, because of a roller attachment that resembles a trailer attached to a truck, the turns need to be wide and not miss any spots on the floor. Also, the 180 degree turns must be followed by a straightening algorithm in order to continue without any complications. Similarly, the 90 degree turns of the wall following program need a straightening algorithm of their own while staying parallel to the walls.

For wall detection, four infrared sensors are used. On the zigzag program, only the front sensor is necessary, but the wall following program requires all four as direction control and backward collisions must be avoided. When IR LED emits an infrared frequency in the range of 40 kHz, the light bounces back; the detector will detect the light and give a signal to the microcontroller [3].

The objective then is to create an autonomous polyurethane applier that covers most of the floor with a liquid.