Path Planning for Robotic Artistic Stone Surface Production

Abstract

Traditional artistic stone processing techniques offer vast possibilities for finishing stone products. However, stone processing is physically highly demanding work requiring stamina as well as skill. This makes products expensive to produce and the detailed design only accessible for skilled masons as an efficient communication between designers and masons is difficult. We introduce a robot-based approach to produce ``artistic'' surfaces for individualized stone products. First, distinctive traditional, manual processing techniques will be introduced and analyzed towards enabling us to specify the necessary requirements of an adaption to an industrial robot. These requirements are then implemented in an automated tool and an automated path planning algorithm. Building upon a visual programming environment we will present an accessible interface that allows the user to apply customizable stone structuring patterns to an individual stone product.