A systematic automated grasping approach for automatic manipulation of fabric with soft robot grippers

Abstract

Purpose

The garment industry will be one of the major beneficiaries of advances in smart manufacturing, as it is highly labor-intensive and heavily depends on labor force. Manipulating robots in human environments has made great strides in recent years. However, the main research has focused on rigid, solid objects and core capabilities such as grasping, placing remain a challenging problem when dealing with soft textiles. The experimental results indicate that adopting the proposed bionic soft finger will provide garment manufacturers with smart manufacturing capabilities. Then, the purpose of this paper is to utilize the flexibility of the soft finger to transfer fabric layer by layer without damage in garment automation.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, a new way to separate layer by layer pieces of fabric has been inspired by the rise of soft robotics and their applications in automation. Fabric gripping is accomplished by wiping deformation and pinching the fabric. A single fabric piece is separated from cutting pile by the soft finger in four steps: making an arch by pressing, wiping deformation, grasping and separating, and placing.

Findings

The case study demonstrated that the soft finger arrangement for automated grasping of fabric pieces of a garment can be successfully applied to delicate fabric. A combination of cloth shape and weight determines the number of soft fingers. In addition, the soft finger was tested on different types of fabrics to determine its performance and application capabilities. The technology may be used to produce clothing intelligently in the future, such as intelligent stacking, intelligent transportation and intelligent packaging, to increase clothing industry productivity.

Originality/value

An industrial bionic soft finger gripping system is proposed in this paper for application in the field of fabric automatic manipulation. A piece of fabric could be picked up and released layer by layer from a stack by the proposed gripper without creating any damage to it. Soft grippers have the right proportion of softness and rigidity like a human being. A soft finger has a potential affinity for soft materials such as fabrics without damaging either their surface or their properties.

Citation

Liu, Y., Su, J., Li, X. and Jin, G. (2023), "A systematic automated grasping approach for automatic manipulation of fabric with soft robot grippers", Industrial Robot, Vol. 50 No. 4, pp. 623-632. https://doi.org/10.1108/IR-07-2022-0173