Performance Assessment of a Robot for Use in a Fabric Test Cell

Summary

Of late, there has been an increasing interest in the application of robotics in the textile industry. The interim development of a robotic system, for automated testing of low stress mechanical and surface properties of fabrics, is described in this paper. Task-oriented performance tests conducted on an I.B.M robot, selected for the present application, are described. Unlike conventional material handling applications, the robot will need to manipulate the fabric samples, apply load or deformation test cycles directly on a fabric sample and measure the forces and deformations for transmission to a computer for further analysis. Since the robot is expected to perform the actual test cycles automatically, it is important to evaluate robot performance parameters such as position accuracy and structural compliance. The performance tests described have been conducted by simulating the actual conditions which would be used for fabric testing. It is concluded that the robot and the proposed test equipment are satisfactory for the tasks envisaged and encourage the investigators to proceed to the next stage of development.