This Project was selected from the ARM Institute’s 23-01 Technology Project Call that addressed the following topic areas:
- Automated Robotic Task Planning
- Multi-Robot, Multi-Human Collaboration, Task Sharing & Task Allocation
- Safe and Scalable Manufacturing of Energetics
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Robotics for Manufacturing
- Discovery Workshops and Market Studies
Project Team:
Apparel Robotics Corporation (Principal Investigator), MassRobotics
Topic Areas Addressed:
Automated Robotic Task Planning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Robotics for Manufacturing
Description:
Clothing manufacturing is a very labor-intensive process with 80% of the total labor cost attributed to material handling, and most labor manufacturing is completed offshore. For the garment manufacturing industry to progress meaningfully towards automation, several effective fabric handling technologies must arise. This project will develop new flexible robotic material handling capabilities required to unload a cutting table or a conveyor that has a number of cut nested fabric pieces of varying sizes and geometries on it. The project will: 1) use a vision system to identify the cut fabric piece based on the shape and other features 2) develop an adaptable end-of-arm-tooling (EOAT) to adjust to the geometry of the fabric piece to be picked up, and 3) leverage the fabric gripper technology developed by Apparel Robotics Corp. Beyond garment manufacturing, the proposed system will bolster automation capabilities in aerospace and other industries working with flexible, fabric-like materials.