Background
Funding for this project was provided by U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) through the American Rescue Act Grant – an effort to fund high-impact robotics projects for research, development, and testbeds for pandemic response. Learn more.
Objectives & Technical Approach
The ARM Institute’s fellow Manufacturing USA Institute Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA) will lead this project with the ARM Institute providing support on the robotic sewing tasks.
This project will leverage the outputs from two previously funded ARM Institute robotics projects focused on robotic sewing: Bot Couture: Robotic Clothing Manufacturing and Built-By-Bot: Customized Mask Assembly using Robots.
This project seeks to develop and produce fully automated Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) lines for surgical masks. The mask production line would be set up standard shipping containers for easy deployment. The goal is to develop, prototype, and implement a portable mask production line to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and future pandemics.
Impact
Surgical masks are a critical component of PPE. This project seeks an automated solution to producing surgical masks for future pandemics and similar crises.