PALGRIP-Twin for Handling a Piece of Fabric
Published:
A. Seino1, 2, F. Tokuda1, 2, A. Kobayashi1, 2, K. Kosuge1, 2, 3
1. Centre for Transformative Garment Production, Unites 1215 to 1220, 12/F, Building 19W, SPX1, Hong Kong Schience Park, Pak Shek Kok, N. T., Hong Kong SAR
2. Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR
3. Director of the JC STEM Lab of Robotics forSoft Materials, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR
Published in 2025 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation (ICMA), (2025)
DOI: 10.1109/ICMA65362.2025.11120740
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- Abstract
- A pick-and-place operation of fabric pieces is a fundamental task in automated garment manufacturing. For easy installation of the robotic hand, we developed the Passive Actuator-Less Gripper (PALGRIP), which enables pick-and-place operation of a piece of fabric without the use of actuators. Maintaining fabric flatness during transport is essential for high-precision operations and typically requires a dual-arm system to grasp at least two points on the piece of fabric while keeping a small tension on the fabric. In this paper, we propose PALGRIP-Twin, a novel passive gripper that can hold two points of a fabric piece using a single manipulator, enabling the fabric to be lifted and transported in a spread state without any actuators. PALGRIP-Twin consists of two passive pinching mechanisms and one self-locking mechanism, while PALGRIP consists of one passive pinching mechanism and one self-locking mechanism. By placing two passive pinching mechanisms on both sides of the self-locking mechanism, the distance from the robot endpoint to the fingertips of the gripper can be made small. We demonstrate the effectiveness of PALGRIP-Twin through experiments, confirming its ability to perform pick-and-place tasks while maintaining fabric flatness and ensuring reliable separation of a fabric from a fabric stack.