Marble mosaic tiling automation with a four degrees of freedom Cartesian robot

Abstract

The art of mosaic has arisen thousands of years ago. Despite all those years and all the attention it has received till today, mosaic tiling is still being carried out manually and mosaic tiling processes have never been changed except the tool and material developments. In this paper: history of the mosaic art, the ancient and today's mosaic tiling processes are mentioned briefly. A Cartesian robot with four degrees of freedom is designed and manufactured for mosaic tiling automation. An algorithm for mosaic tiling and the control of robot, named "MOSTIL" is developed. The control software interprets a pattern file that is prepared using an existing two-dimensional (2D) CAD package and computes the pieces' locations of the pattern and guides the robotic arm. As a result of this work, some experimental applications for several mosaic patterns which are designed using a 2D CAD software and saved as "dxf" format, are carried out by the robot automatically.