The Handling and Spreading Algorithms of a Multi-arm Robot System for Automated Cloth Sheet Ironing Machine

To realize the soft work handling application for automated cloth sheet ironing machine, a multi-arm robot system which can operate a cloth sheet handling and spreading operations is developed. This robot system consists of two rectangular coordinates type robot arms and one rotational joint type robot arm. And this system has the detection system using infra-red detection sensors to detect the cloth sheet edge and the sheet existence. And to avoid the collision, the motion plane of these robots is parallel to the particular plane on the Cartesian frame. In this report, considering the motion of a cloth sheet handling by human hands and the co-operative motion for the multi-arm robot system, the quantification method of the cloth sheet handling spreading operations by the geometrical calculation are proposed. Especially, the quantification method of the carton box assembling operations is applied to this motion. And considering the conventional finding approach of the cloth sheet edge by human hands, the cloth sheet existence and overlapping detection method without image-processing is proposed. Also, based on the motion test results, it is clear that the robot system can pick up and spread the cloth sheet edges.