Laundering Tasks Performed by a Robot: Spreading Out and Sorting of the Clothes

摘要

The purpose of our study is to find a means of putting away clean laundry using a robot. This paper presents a method of spreading out and sorting crumpled laundry by dual manipulators and image processing. Because the shape of cloth tends to change in various ways depending on the situation, it is difficult for robot hands to spread out and sort laundry. For this reason, we propose a method of grasping the lowest points of laundry and changing the grasping points several times for spreading and sorting laundry. Laundry can be categorized to a small number of shapes, and this makes it easy for robot to be recognized. Furthermore, recognition of the shapes of laundry during the spreading process allows more accurate sorting. Using the manipulators and image processing eight kinds of laundry could be spread out and sorted successfully. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown through experimental results.