• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.454-461
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• 1999

A concrete floor trowel machine, developed in the U.S in 1990's, consists of only two rotary trowels, and doesn't need any other mechanism for motion such as wheels. When the machine flattens a concrete floor with its rotary trowels, the machine can move in any direction by utilizing the unbalanced friction forces occurring between the rotary wheels and the floor when the trowels are tilted in appropriate directions. In order to automate the trowels machine, this paper proposed the self-propulsive concrete finishing trowel robot which has twin trowels. For the control of the robot, this paper discussed the following. Firstly, the dynamics model of the driving frictional force applied on each trowel from the floor is derived. Secondly, the relationship between the driving force for the robot and the control variable of the robot is derived. Finally, the basic motion of the robot are realized by using the obtained relationship. This paper figures out how the concrete floor finishing robot with tow trowels moves and will contribute to realizing it.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.16 no.8
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• pp.38-45
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• 1999

The 2-trowel type concrete floor finishing robot can move in any direction by adjusting the posture or trowels without any wheels. Since the quality of the smoothed and polished concrete floor is determined by plastering speed, we need to control the velocity of the robot. However, we cannot use the typical motion control method because it is very difficult to measure the velocity of the robot, in contrast to the mobile robots with wheels. To overcome this difficulty, the following are studied in this paper: we found that the robot dynamics has the disturbance depending on its translational speed, and showed that there exists the saturated velocity of the robot which is set by the posture of the trowels, and obtained the relationship between the saturated velocity and the posture in the translation. The result enables us to control the motion of the robot only by adjusting the posture of trowels without measuring the velocity of the robot. Currently, we built the troweling robot and are experimenting its performance with the proposed motion control method.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.16 no.5 s.98
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• pp.151-159
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• 1999

A self-propulsive polishing robot is proposed as a method which automates a floor polisher. The proposed robot with two rotary brushes does not require any mechanism such as wheels to obtain driving forces. When the robot polishes a floor with its two brushes rotating, friction forces occur between the two brushes and the floor. These friction forces are used to move the robot. Thus, the robot can move in any direction by controlling the two rotary brushes properly. In this paper, firstly a dynamics model of a brush is presented. It computes the friction force between the brush and the floor. Secondly, the dynamics of the proposed robot is presented by using the bush dynamics. Finally, the inverse dynamics is solved for the basic motions, such as the forward, backward, leftward, rightward motions and the pure rotaion. This paper will contribute to realize a self-propulsive polishing robot as proposed above, In addition, this paper will give basic ideas to automate the concrete floor finishing trowel, because its basic idea for motion is similar to that of the proposed robot.