While robots are able to perform repeatable tasks with speed and accuracy, its use in garment industry has been limited by challenges in grasping and handling soft fabrics using commercially available robot end effectors. This projects presents a robotic system as an automation solution for fabric fusing process in garment industry.
Fabric fusing is the process which combines a piece of woven or knitted fabric with an interface material (interlining) to provide additional firmness and support. This project has been set up in Hickey Freeman factory floor for demonstration.
We developed a large electroadhesion plate made out of Printed Circuit Board and tested with different types / shapes / sizes of shell and interlining fabric. The gripper consists of electroadhesion plate, spring-loaded pins and voltage controller box. Each individual components are controlled by Robot Raconteur node and integrated together with a master user interface.
The robot equipped with electroadhesion gripper picks up fabric from different location and align them together with vision feedback, then pass the bundle into fusing machine. This process is fully automated and has a high repeatibility subject to different humidity ranges.
