Fabric Pick and Place Automation with Autoliv

Automating the pick & place flow of fabric components has many application areas in car safety equipment manufacturing, which can improve productivity and safety. The process starts with a nesting solution that fits customer-specific components onto fabric, minimizing residue. A laser cutter cuts the desired components out of the fabric. After laser cutting, human operators carry out manual tasks such as visual inspection as well as positioning and packaging cut fabric components to loading boxes. The pieces of fabric can contain quality defects such as incomplete or additional cuts, issues with the fabric or other markers, which require manual inspection and intervention by the operator. An ideal solution should be flexible, scalable and capable of picking and positioning deforming fabric components with varying thickness and texture. The solution should also enable the fallback to using operators under special circumstances.

Autoliv is the leading manufacturer of automotive safety products. Laser cutting is the beginning of the textile process in every Autoliv textile plant. A successful implementation will have a fast payback mainly from:

1) reducing labor costs,

2) reducing injuries at unloading areas, and

3) saving fabric material. Autoliv plans to roll out the solution to 12 sites and has committed resources, including a team and a budget. A successful solution can be further scaled to wide internal use e.g. to multiple production facilities.