It is challenging to automate the shoe upper adhesive spraying process using a robot due to the three-dimensional curved shape of the shoe upper. This paper proposes a method to automate the shoe upper adhesive spraying process with a 3-D measuring device and an industrial robot. The adhesive spraying automation process consists of the following steps, First, a transformation matrix calibration is performed to make the points measured by the 3-D measuring device and the robot end-effector points the same. Second, the shoe gauge line that connects the shoe adhesive spaying line measured by the 3D measurement device is smoothed. Lastly, the target points of the robot end-effector to quantitatively spray the adhesive are selected and the robot end-effector position/orientation to operate the robot is generated. The proposed method was validated on the test bed of a shoe upper spray system. With the method proposed in this paper, even non-robot experts can measure shoe gauge line data with a 3-D measuring device and the shoe upper adhesive spraying process can be automated without manually operating a robot.

In this paper, we propose a method to generate the trajectory of a robotic shoe sole spray system by extracting target points from a 3-D model of a mold sole. Point cloud transformation based on the mold 3-D file format, Z-Axis uppermost point extraction, elimination of unnecessary points, and final target point selection are sequentially performed. The Catmull- Rom algorithm is then applied to plan spline trajectory that allows the robot end effector to spray at a constant speed by following the extracted target points. The proposed algorithm is validated on the test bed of a shoe sole spray system. Through the proposed method, the adhesive can be uniformly dispensed to the sole of the shoe in an atypical shape without the process of extracting the work point using the vision system.

In this study, we developed a hydraulic manipulator to assist firefighters and rescue personnel at disaster sites. In the design procedure, we analyzed the manipulator considering the hydraulic actuators as well as the manipulator kinematics and dynamics. For the user interface, a macro/manual operation concept was proposed to provide an effective response in emergency and disaster situations. To cope with abnormalities of the disaster site operator, a protocol for switching local/remote operations was developed. The effectiveness of the hydraulic manipulator and operating system was verified through task implementation experiment.