Disney introduces the PaintCopter – an autonomous spray-painting drone

Specialists from Disney Research and the Swiss Higher Technical School of Zurich developed PaintCopter, a drone that can independently apply a certain pattern to the walls.

PaintCopter is a quadrocopter, equipped with a special “hand” with a paint sprayer. He can apply a given pattern on the walls, not only on flat surfaces, but also on more complex, three-dimensional structures. The system, which the drone uses, takes into account the surface relief, adapting the desired pattern to it, and then controls the drone and carries out paint spraying.

When scanning the desired surface, the drone is controlled by a human operator. The operator then “places” the desired pattern on the compiled volumetric model, after which the system independently selects the appropriate trajectory of the drone’s flight and calculates the sprayer operation - these commands are transmitted to the drone, which is offline and applies the pattern.

Researchers will present the development at the ICRA 2019 conference.

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