Abstract
Research on labor saving and automation of housework by robots is proceeding rapidly due to the increasing population of aged persons and improved electronics in houses. The special problems concerning housework robots are the enormous complexity of the working environment and huge number and variety of objects in a house. Therefore the recognition function of the robot is desired to be highly independent of the working environment. Moreover, the robot should be able to treat various kinds of "nonsolid-form objects" in a house. The object of this research is to develop the technology by which a robot can handle nonsolid-form objects, particularly clothes. The final goal of the research is the creation of a housekeeping robot which can put unarranged clothes into order at a specified place. Some of the concrete subtasks of this job are taking out one form of clothes and expanding, classifying, folding and putting it in the specified place. In this paper we propose a planning strategy for the task of the unfolding clothes.
