story and State-of-the-Art
Although plastering is one of the most physically
strenuous jobs in building construction it was not
before the early fifties that machines were developed
277which supported this strenuous task. The first
machines to be developed were automated mixers
which made the task of manual plaster mixing obsolete
[1, 2]. The introduction of plastering machines such as
RUMA 1, Putzmeister KS 1 [3] and Putzmeister
Gipsomat [4] in the sixties was considered
revolutionary and marked the beginning of a new era
in plastering technology.
The development of the AMPA machine [5] was
the first attempt to significantly increase the level of
automation but this kind of equipment has never been
accepted in practice. Automated spraying of mortar
and paint has recently been demonstrated by means of
the mobile articulated prototype robot TAMIR which
had been developed in Israel [6] and a prototype of a
cartesian robot which had been constructed in a
Swedish joint venture between Swedish construction
companies and universities [7]. Unfortunately these
developments have been unable to provide a
breakthrough in the plastering industry. Thus, even
today, the plastering machines developed in the sixties
such as [3, 4] are still considered to be State-of-theArt.