Automatic Garment Folder

By Samuel, YAKOBUS | Marvin, DEEPAK | Geraldi, EDBERT

Garment folders are popular nowadays because they can keep clothes looking fresh and pack clothes easily in a trip. Moreover, they can reduce the storage space of clothes when they are used at home. There are many types of grament folder and one popular type is shown in Fig. 1.1.

Figure 1.1: Garment Folder (source: www.amazon.com)

However, there is no automatication for grament folders and it is still time consumption to fold clothes by hand. In this project, we develop an automatic garment folder to solve this problem. The outlook of the automatic garment folder is shown in Fig. 1.2.

Figure 1.2: Automatic Garment Folder

The automatic garment folder is designed to take the folding operation automatically. The folding sequence is shown in Fig. 1.3 (it goes from (a) to (e)). On top of the folder, we have three small pressure switches to detect whether a cloth is placed on top. When all three switches are pressed, the microcontroller of the folder detects the cloth is placed on top and starts to do the folding operation. The circuit for the three switches and the folder are shown in Fig. 1.4 and 1.5 respectively.

Figure 1.4: The circuit for the switches

Figure 1.5: The circuit for the folder

Originally we use the folder in Fig. 1.1 for the demonstration. However, we find that it is too heavy for the motors to do the folding. Thus, we create a paper folder and finally it works quite well in the demonstration. The demonstration video is shown below.

Comment from judges: It is a good idea for the team to give up the original garment folder but a paper folder so that their motors can move the folder to fold a T-shirt. Their design can be further improved by considering some motors with high torque dc motors so that their system can install in the original garment folder. Moreover, the way to detect a T-shirt can be further enhanced by using other sensors (e.g., infra-red sensors). Finally, more experiments should be carried out to investigate the performance of different garments.