Direct writing of images onto 3D surfaces

Aims to develop a greyscale "painting system" by enabling the physical reproduction of digital texture maps on arbitrary 3D objects selectively exposing "pixels" of photographic emulsion with a robot mounted light source. After reviewing existing methods of "decorating" 3D components, the properties of photographic emulsion are introduced and the nature of the rendering process' pixels discussed. A proposed path planning algorithm, used to derive both the robot's movement and the exposure times directly from a VRML representation, is then presented. Results obtained from successfully rendering images on the surface of a test object are presented. Limitations of current system include the overall process time and the inability to handle objects with concave geometry.