Towards on-site autonomous robotic floor tiling of mosaics

Humanoid robots have been a central research topic of robotics for the last 30 years. However, it has not been until the last decade that humanoids became a viable commercial product. While not full scale, robots such as NAO provide a large range of motion with multiple sensors for the environment. With these new robots, this paper explores their application in the manufacturing industry. Floor tiling, a still manual procedure on-site, requires significant time in both awkward positions and bent over. These two movements are main causes of back injury, the leading cause of early retirement and overall injuries in the construction industry. This paper explores the efficacy of using current commercial robots for on-site autonomous floor tiling through specific experiments and methods in programming integrated systems. A novel system for combining the automation of manufacturing of mosaics and the automation of on-site square floor tiling is presented.