Fixture-Free 2D Sewing Using a Dual-Arm Manipulator System

This paper proposes a fixture-free 2D sewing system using a dual-arm manipulator, i.e., the seam lines of the top and bottom fabric parts are the same. The proposed 2D sewing system sews two stacked fabric parts together along a desired seam line printed on the top fabric part without the use of a fixture. In the proposed system, the set of aligned and stacked fabric parts is held by the end-effectors of the dual-arm manipulator in coordination. The dual-arm manipulator controls the motion of the fabric parts on the flat sewing table stitch by stitch in coordination, while keeping the manipulated fabric parts flat using the internal force applied to the set of fabric parts. A novel vision-based seam line tracking control is proposed to control the motion of the set of fabric parts along the printed seam line on the top fabric part. The convergence of the tracking error is analyzed for sewing along both straight and curved seam lines and is shown to be specified by the control parameters. Sewing experiments show that the tracking error converges to zero as analyzed. The sewing experiments also show that the newly proposed trajectory generation method, which synchronizes the coordinated motion of the manipulators and the motion of the sewing needle, is essential for achieving accurate sewing.Note to Practitioners—Most semi-automatic sewing machines and pattern sewers on the market use fixtures to handle the stacked fabric parts. They require the user to customize the fixture depending on the shape, size, and material of the fabric parts to be sewn together. Users are required to redesign/reconfigure the fixture to sew different fabric parts. Our robotic sewing system is based on the concept of fixture-free sewing, i.e., the pose of the set of stacked fabric parts is controlled by the end-effectors without using the fixture. The internal force applied to the fabric parts by the end-effectors is used to keep the fabric parts flat, and the position of the fabric parts is controlled by the motions of the end-effectors in coordination with the proposed vision-based seam line tracking control. The proposed robotic sewing system provides practitioners with a new approach to fixture-free automatic sewing of fabric parts.