Clothes Folding Task by Tool-Using Robot

Abstract

Dropping birth rates and the aging of society are expected to lead to the increasing use of robots in the home to assist in housework and family care. We target a robot that folds and stacks laundry. On the other hand, fabrics variably change in their shapes and, thus, the robot is difficult to handle them. Therefore, this paper proposes the system for folding a variety of clothes by a collective behavior of a tool and the robot. The tool has a function to bend and double clothes by using a plate. The robot positions clothes on the tool to ensure correct folding at the intended location. Our robot model automatically adjusts the positioning and course of folding, as detailed below, and checks progress based on visual information. A folding experiment confirmed the feasibility of our proposal.