Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : June 28, 2023 - July 01, 2023
This paper describes a pair of end-effectors for manipulation a fabric product based on pinch-and-slide unfolding. One end-effector is two-fingered and has a passive rotation mechanism. This mechanism prevents the fabric from falling off the fingers when spreading the fabric in a pinch-and-slide motion. We also devise the mechanism to keep the fingers parallel to handle various fabric thicknesses. In addition, the other end-effector and its motion method were proposed for smooth folding after unfolding. Experiments were conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the end-effectors, and it was confirmed that unfold-to-fold manipulation were possible with fabrics of different thicknesses and weights.
