Trade fair highlight 22. March 2024

Common systems for automatic handling of garments are often based on single plastic packaging, so that suction grippers can efficiently pick and handel individual items. Such an approach no longer works for items returned from end customers, where the packaging may be open, broken or missing completely. The proposed system is able to pick randomly arranged, stacked, fully and partially packed as well as unpacked clothing from a pile, trolley or box for subsequent sorting activities.

While robotic pick-and-place operations are standard in applications with rigid objects, dealing with textiles adds a number of challenges to the process with image processing. Garments are deformable and come in a wide variety of fabrics, colours and shapes with very different characteristics. In addition, fastenings and self-fasteners complicate the identification and the complex interaction properties make it hard to predict how garments will behave when gripped in certain positions. For the presented specific application, it is also necessary that only individual garments are picked up, as duplicate grasps would later lead to an overload in the individual evaluation of each returned garment.