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With the growing need of automation for garment assembly in the clothing industry comes the requirement for a compete range of textile handling devices. Robotics offers the flexibility needed to compete in a market where change in style and fashion can be both rapid and unpredictable. The actual physical mechanisms involved in the use of electrostatic attraction of clothing fabrics as a robot gripping technique are discussed. Following an outline of the underlying principles, experimental results are presented for a range of materials tested using electroadhesive surfaces. A selection of robot gripper configurations are provided together with a discussion of their relative merits.

Much of the work on teleoperation has concentrated on active force and torque feedback between the slave device carrying out the required physical function and the master controller being guided by human hands. This gives the operator a feeling of resistance or damped acceleration when obstacles are encountered or large masses lifted. However, little idea of an object's physical outline or profile can be portrayed by these techniques, and such systems must be augmented by additional vision facilities. Similarly, the aerospace industry is presently developing ever increasingly sophisticated virtual reality environments for pilot training. It is felt that, in addition to visual, audio and torque feedback, some form of tactile feedback would be useful.

Shape adaptive gripping techniques are becoming increasingly important in robotics as the handling of more delicate or irregular shaped objects are tackled. The use of compliance allows the acquisition of irregularly shaped parts to be made without the necessity of employing sophisticated sensing techniques. Furthermore, shape adaption using very compliant mediums allows extremely delicate objects such as glassware and soft fruit to be handled without damage. A comparison with other compliant techniques such as electrorheological fluids and remote centre compliance is covered in more depth elsewhere.

Recent advances in both robotic technology and polymer chemistry have yielded techniques and materials capable of handling textile fabrics without excessive engineering complexity or fear of damage to the fabric. Chemical adhesives have often been used in the past for fabric manipulation but due to some serious constraints inherent in most adhesives the technology has been largely relegated to the use of consumable adhesive tapes. Many of the problems previously encountered have now been overcome by the use of polymer gum materials which have extremely long tack lifetimes. This has led to the development of a number of gum unit end effectors (GUE) for the purposes of fabric handling, manipulation and ply separation.

The use of chemical adhesives for the automated handling of materials, like most other techniques has a long and varied history. A patent for a paper sheet feeding mechanism was originally filed in 1941, and for textile handling in 1961. In both cases adhesive tapes capable of being automatically wound on are utilised in preference to tacky pads. According to Parker et al., the adhesive force drops approximately linearly with use. Their own tests yielding a 50 per cent force deterioration after about 25 cycles using the same section of tape.

Since the 1960s many alphanumeric to tactile data conversion methods have been investigated, mainly with the ultimate aim of assisting the blind. More recently, interest has been directed toward the display of pictures on haptically explorable surfaces – tactile imaging – for a range of medical, remote sensing and entertainment purposes. This paper examines the technologies which have been utilised for haptically explorable tactile displays over the past three decades, focussing on those which appear commercially viable in the immediate future.

Discusses the failings of conventional fixturing systems such as jigs and clamps and describes how electrorheological fluids can be used for flexible fixturing and workpiece retention.

Despite many advances during the last decade in both infra‐red sensor and solid state camera technology, until now little headway has been made in the production of cost‐effective semiconductor sensor arrays capable of operating far into the infra‐red. Old ideas, renewed by the capabilities offered by the latest micromachine technology, may change all this. Reviews the problems associated with building such sensor arrays before introducing some interesting new research results.

Describes the benefits of using electroadhesion when handling very delicate, polished and/or coated optical and electro‐optical microcomponents. Electroadhesion is a technique already familiar to those working in the semiconductor industry and is eminently suitable for the handling of microcomponents in air, gas or vacuum.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Production and Automation (IPA) in Stuttgart is situated adjacent to the Universität Stuttgart, on the outskirts of the city in a small suburban village called Vaihingen in the state of Baden‐Württemburg. Visitors entering the town by car, hoping to rely on members of the local population for directions to the university, may well find themselves, as I did, in completely the wrong place. Like many German higher education and research establishments, the Universität Stuttgart consists of a number of widely distributed sites. The local dialect is Schwäbisch (something akin to broad Geordie) which makes any form of meaningful conversation in my limited Hocht Deutsch almost impossible.