Painter Robots from Berlin

It paints interiors: i.e. it sprays paint onto the walls. Over two years, the painter robot from Conbotics was developed to copy the movements of a master painter. Instead of a common-or-garden industrial robot, Conbotics are betting on a featherweight of just 130 kg. The nimble sprayer is not intended to compete with human specialists. Quite the opposite. Rather, it will take over monotonous work and jobs that are “hazardous to the health”. The three founders, Philipp Heyne (product development), David Franke (control development) and Cristian Amaya Gómez (business development want to use these robots to counteract the shortage of qualified workers in the building industry.

Second place at the 2021 start-up competition

The trio from the building site are engineers who studied at TU Berlin and worked for the Fraunhofer Institut before they established Conbotics. In 2021, their company took second place among hundreds of contestants in the vote for the year’s 50 best start-ups. At first, they want to rent out their robot for projects; later on; there will be a leasing sales model. For one square metre of painted area, they estimate around 80 per cent of the usual painter costs.

Robot family in the works

The painter robot, which is slated to appear on the market in 2024 due to extensive certification processes, is only the first of other automata planned for the construction branch. With slight adjustments, the painter could also apply floor markings as it is largely autonomous, moves through rooms and scans them so it can distinguish doors and windows from walls. At any rate, this painter robot will be the founding ancestor of an entire dynasty of automatic helpers.