Robotic Fabric Handling for Automating Garment Manufacturing

This paper presents the potential use of a robotic end-effector for acquiring single plies from a stack of fabrics. This type of end-effector would be required to integrate robots into present-day garment manufacturing operations. Two design concepts, pins and temporary adhesion, were shown experimentally to successfully acquire a single fabric ply from a stack of plies approximately 95 percent of the time. These tests were equally successful on both woven and knit fabrics. Although the experiments were restricted to small square fabric plies, the feasibility of using a robotic end-effector to acquire single plies from a stack of fabrics was demonstrated.