Differential Feed Control Applied to Corner Matching in Automated Sewing

This paper presents a new method for independent feed control in an automated sewing cell. This is important to match the corners of the parts as well as to compensate for uncertain material characteristics and variations in the length of the parts. In this method, the feed speed for the two parts is controlled independently, based on measurements of the endpoints of the parts while keeping an equal sewing force in both parts. Different strategies for correcting errors are presented and experiments are shown to evaluate the different strategies. Possibilities for using the methods to match reference points during the sewing are discussed.