Unfolding a Folded Fabric Using Information of Outline with Vision and Touch Sensor

A hand/eye system for handling flexible materials is under development. We consider that much more attention should be paid to a cooperative sensing of touch and vision when flexible or limp objects such as fabrics are handled. This paper presents basic ideas about handling flexible materials and a strategy of sensor-based manipulation for unfolding a fabric piece in a case of primitive fabric handling movements. A result of robotic handling for unfolding a folded fabric was shown. A fabric is easy to change its shape in 3 dimensional space. Therefore a partial pattern matching of fabrics using information of those outline was done in order to guess where was a folded corner point.Vision and tactile sensing was used for picking up a folded part of the fabric.