Abstract
In this paper we introduce a novel robotic end-effector for pick-and-release of a sheet of cotton cloth. One of the main operations in a factory for sewing cloth products is to pick up cloth parts, provide them to a sewing machine, and sew them together. Fabric products are assembled by performing this work in various processes. Each work starts with a lot of cloth parts stacked near a sewing machine. In the case of underwear, thin cotton cloth is the target of manipulation, but such cloth parts tend to stick to each other, and a certain skill or technical acuity is required for picking up. Therefore, this work is basically done manually in the present. The purpose of this study is to automate such manipulation, so we devise an end-effector that picks up only the top one of stacked cotton sheets. The proposed end-effector has a mechanism that is a cylindrical brush attached with a remover cloth on its surface. The cylindrical brush is grounded on a cotton sheet, and then is rotated to roll up only the cotton sheet. This mechanism makes it possible to release the sheet by rotating the brush in the reverse. We constructed hardware with this function and attached it to the tip of a robotic manipulator. In addition, we performed system integration so that the initial position of rolling up a cotton sheet could be automatically determined from images taken by a camera. We also conducted evaluation experiments.
Highlights
One main operation in a factory for sewing cloth products is to pick up cloth parts, provide them to a sewing machine, and sew them together
The purpose of this study is to automate the work of providing a cotton sheet, which is often used for underwear, to a sewing machine
Based on the findings of previous study [1], we proposed the use of cylindrical brush and incorporated it in a compact end-effector
Summary
One main operation in a factory for sewing cloth products is to pick up cloth parts, provide them to a sewing machine, and sew them together. In the case of manufacturing underwear, cloth parts made of thin cotton sheet are sewn together. The purpose of this study is to automate the work of providing a cotton sheet, which is often used for underwear, to a sewing machine. The authors have studied a method of picking up a sheet of cotton cloth using a brush [1]. We propose a novel hardware and manipulation procedure that can pick up a cotton sheet more stably with keeping the idea of rolling up. The proposed hardware was mounted on the tip of an articulated manipulator, and the picking up and release of cotton sheet was evaluated. We propose an effective way, which introduces a cylindrical brush, for picking up thin sheets of fabric that adhere together. The sixth section introduces experimental results with an integrated robot system, and seventh section concludes the paper
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