Autonomous Painting via MIST’s Maverick Robot

Do you dread painting, but don’t want to hire someone to do it for you? The good news is, you may soon not have to do either, and instead welcome Maverick, an autonomous paint spraying robot from MIST (Mobile Intelligent Spraying Technologies). The robot comes from a team of mechatronics engineering students from the University of Waterloo, and while it’s not yet available for sale, they are accepting sponsors if you’d like to help make robot-painting a reality.

Maverick takes the form of what could be mistaken for a miniature robotic forklift, raising a paint sprayer to the right level using an elevator system, and navigating a room with with a trio of omni wheels. This allows Maverick to slide in an X/Y direction as well as rotate to properly fill in corner areas. Currently, the robot can operate via a waypoint system in order to keep it a certain distance from the wall while spraying, using LiDAR to map its environment. While not implemented at the moment, they plan to also attach a camera behind the sprayer, using computer vision to improve painting quality.

Maverick has taken eight months of research and development to implement, and the hard work has paid off in a beautiful prototype. Check it out in action along with some notes on the build process in the video below!

[h/t TechCrunch]