With a progress of an aging society with fewer children, an introduction of robots for family
use is expected. Focusing on laundry cleanup by robots, we are studying clothing …

While in most industries, most processes are automated and human workers have either
been replaced by robots or work alongside them, fewer changes have occurred in industries …

The paper describes a robotic-arm gripper with soft-tipped fingers to perform human-like
grasps of flexible material pieces out of an unordered bundle. The primary purpose is to …

We describe here a mechanical system that can grasp, unfold, and position fabrics in a
series of motions. Fabric setting process by a human consists of wiping, pinching, unfolding …

Dropping birth rates and the aging of society are expected to lead to the increasing use of
robots in the home to assist in housework and family care. We target a robot that folds and …

This paper presents wiping motion as a task during which the movement and deformation of
a deformable object occur simultaneously. During the wiping motion of a deformable object …

The paper presents a knowledge-based system (KBS) for the conceptual design of grippers
for handling fabrics. Its main purpose is the integration of the domain knowledge in a single …

Unfolding or spreading is a very important process in clothes handling in order to sort out
whether an item is a shirt, skirt, pants, etc. Spreading of clothes basically involves holding …

This paper describes an unfolding motion of fabric in air using pinching slip motion. During
the pinching slip motion, the weight of the fabric generates relative movement between the …

A new approach for flexible automated handling of fabrics in the sewing process is
described, which focuses to control the cloth tension applied by a robot. The proposed …