Single arm robotic garment folding path generation

We address the accurate single arm robotic garment folding. The folding capability is influenced mostly by the folding path which is performed by the robotic arm. This paper presents a new method for the folding path generation based on the static equilibrium of forces. The existing approach based on a similar principle confirmed to be accurate for one-dimensional strips only. We generalize the method to two-dimensional shapes by modeling the garment as an elastic shell. The path generated by our method prevents the garment from slipping while folding on a low friction surface. We demonstrate the accuracy of this approach by comparing our paths (a) with the existing method when one-dimensional strips of different materials were modeled, and (b) experimentally with real robotic folding.

The paper proposes a robotic garment folding path generation procedure. It uses the garment model represented by a thin shell. The path computation seeks states satisfying a static equilibrium condition.