Robotics Tomorrow: Sewbots Transforming The Textile Industry
Automation in the textile industry started over two centuries ago with John Kay’s invention of the flying shuttle. The machine not only enabled an increase in production but also brought down the number of people required to operate the weaving loom, from two to one. While the earliest attempts of automation during the industrial revolution were directed at minimizing human efforts in labor-intensive processes, the tremendous advancements achieved in the field of technology in the past few decades have made it possible to completely eliminate human intervention from many quarters of the manufacturing industry.
Groundbreaking developments in recent years in the fields of Robotics and AI have allowed the textile industry to progressively adopt automation in their manufacturing processes. Advanced computer-assisted design software and computer-controlled cutting systems have aided in alleviating the bottlenecks in the production process considerably. However, complete automation of apparel creation had always presented the manufacturers with certain challenges. The unpredictable nature of fabrics that are prone to stretching, warping, and folding has always been a major obstacle in the complete automation of sewing garments making human intervention unavoidable. With the launch of SoftWear Automation’s latest assembly line of fully automated sewing robots, named Sewbots, even this last mile of automation in the textile manufacturing industry has been covered. In this article, Vilkor looks at the potential of sewing robots to transform the functioning of the textile industry.
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Read the full article on ROBOTICS TOMORROW, here.