REALTIME CLOSED-LOOP FABRIC POSITIONING VIA DISTRIBUTED ACTUATION AND VISION FEEDBACK

Abstract

The garment manufacturing industry is largely reliant on human labor in conjunction with hard-automation for a great deal of tasks due to robotic challenges in manipulating flexible materials (fabric). One previously proposed solution for this task is the use of a distributed actuation system, which has been demonstrated in open-loop fashion. This paper introduces a method of feedback through fast image processing by exploiting some of the features inherent to the sewing process by tracking (possibly occluded) fabric via polygon matching that allows for full closed-loop control in real time.