Authors:
Filipe Almeida
1
;
Gonçalo Leão
2
;
1
;
Carlos M. Costa
2
;
1
;
Cláudia D. Rocha
1
;
Armando Sousa
2
;
1
;
Lara Gomes da Silva
3
;
Luís F. Rocha
1
and
Germano Veiga
1
Affiliations:
1
Centre for Robotics in Industry and Intelligent Systems of INESC TEC, Porto, Portugal
;
2
Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
;
3
ESI Robotics, Esmeriz, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Dual-Arm Manipulation, Fabrics, Flexible Materials, Robot Handling, Sewing Automation, Textile Industry.
Abstract:
The textile industry is experiencing rapid advancement, reflected in the adoption of innovative and efficient manufacturing techniques. The automation of clothing sewing systems has the potential to reduce the allocation of repetitive tasks to operators, freeing them for more value-added operations. There are several machines on the market that automatically sew the bottom hem of T-shirts, a key component of the garment that fulfills both functional and aesthetic purposes. However, most of them require the fabric to be positioned manually by an operator. To address this issue, this work presents a solution to automate the process of feeding a T-shirt into a SiRUBA sewing machine using a YuMi dual-arm robot. In this scenario, the T-shirt arrives at the workstation with the main front and back pieces of cloth sewn together, seams facing out, and with no sleeves yet. This setup starts by turning the garment inside out with the aid of an automated hanger, ensuring that the seams are faci
ng inward (as the machine requires), and then using the dual-arm robot to feed the garment into the sewing machine. With our approach, the feeding and hemming process took less than 35 seconds, with a feeding success rate of 98%. Therefore, this work can serve as a steppingstone towards more efficient automated sewing systems within the garment production industry.
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