Automated six-degree-of-freedom Stewart platform for heavy floor tiling

Abstract

While existing floor tiling robots provide automated tiling for small tiles, robots designed for large and heavy tiles are rare. This paper develops a six-degree-of-freedom Stewart platform-based floor tiling robot for automated tiling of heavy tiles. The key contributions of this paper are: 1) establishing mechanical and kinematic models for a parallel robot to enhance the payload capacity of existing floor tiling robots. 2) designing a dual-camera system for precise visual alignment by capturing tile corner points from a complete perspective. Experimental validation demonstrated the robot's ability to automatically tile heavy floor tiles, with highly synchronized motions. The dual camera system achieved angle and distance deviations within ±0.001° and 0.5 mm. Quantitative analysis using the Borg RPE scale and EMG signals validated a reduction in physical strain. This research provides a feasible solution for automating heavy floor tile installation, effectively mitigating physical fatigue while enhancing the tiling alignment precision.