Why is automated garment manufacture so difficult?

Although numerous techniques for fabric handling have been invented over the past ten years, the automation of garment assembly has proved to be very difficult to achieve with the cost, flexibility and reliability required by the manufacturers. Some of the reasons for the insufficient reliability and the limited range of application of the handling systems are discussed in this paper. The importance of two fabric properties, friction and bending stiffness, is emphasised. It is also shown that changes in humidity can cause significant changes in the unloaded static friction coefficients and the bending stiffnesses of fabrics. It is then demonstrated how such changes can affect the operation of two representative tasks: gripping a piece of fabric, and sewing.