Virtual 3D Environment for Planning Robotic Paint Routes

This paper examines the possibilities of utilizing a virtual environment for programming painting robots. Two cameras are utilized to track the position and movement of the robot programmer and the orientation and position of a spray gun. This data is converted into a virtual environment where a 3D stereo rendering is projected onto a screen for a robot programmer to visualize by use of anaglyph glasses. It is possible to program the paint robot in the virtual world after which the program can be simulated using state of the art graphics processing unit (GPU) programming to create a realtime visualization of the coverage of paint. Results concerning the accuracy and visual examples of the system are given.