Augmented Reality based Robot Control System for Customized Garment Production

Introduction

• Diversification of products to meet consumer demand is a rising trend in the garment Industry
• Manufacturers are always targeting lower cost, faster delivery and greater sustainability
• Garment industry needs to embrace flexible automation and robotics to lower cost and to enhance human productivity
• As it is too complex to achieve full automation in garment production, collaborative works between robots and humans will be foreseen

Technical Challenges

• Robot and human co-workers need to predict the movements of each other to avoid interference and to better work collaboratively
• Otherwise, robots may stop and idle frequently to ensure safety with the presence of mobile co-workers
• It is difficult for robots without any pre-programming to adapt to new environments
• Existing solution is not scalable to mass customization

Novelty of the Project

The project demonstrates the feasibility of deploying multi-robots by combining computer vision and robotic technologies.

Novel approaches

1. AR-based robot control user interface

• Operator can give navigation commands to a mobile robot by drawing a virtual line with the AR environment
• Operator can see the routes of the robot in real-time
• Operator can re-route the path of the moving robot interactively
• Even laypersons can program the robot

2. Intelligent path planning and solver for mobile robots

• Robot can detect the fast-changing environment with sensors
• Robot can plan its motions and avoid obstacles
• Robot can respond instantly to ad-hoc commands