A Fixture-Free 2D Sewing System by a Dual-Arm Manipulator and Visual
Feedback Control
- Fuyuki Tokuda ,
- Ryo Murakami ,
- Akira Seino ,
- Akinari Kobayashi ,
- Mitsuhiro Hayashibe ,
- Kazuhiro Kosuge
Abstract
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 by applying a novel vision-based seam line
tracking control. 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. 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 synchronization of the
coordinated motion of the manipulators and the motion of the sewing
needle is essential for sewing with sub-millimeter accuracy.