Design and fabrication of an automatic cloth folding machine

Over the past two decades, the influence of automation and technological advancements on our societies has grown significantly. These innovations have alleviated us from mundane domestic tasks, enhancing convenience and providing more time for important matters. These developments have impacted considerably everyday household activities like meal preparation, cleaning, laundry, and grocery shopping. Thanks to technology, autonomous machines can now handle most of these tasks. However, despite numerous attempts to create practical clothes-folding devices, folding clothes remains laborious and tiresome. Existing clothes-folding gadgets are not commercially available. In addition to that, most of the prototypes produced in various research are limited to folding rectangle-shaped items like towels due to their simple design. Moreover, as household devices, safety concerns arise when these gadgets operate close to children and pets, potentially causing accidents. Additionally, larger and more advanced clothes-folding machines can be inconvenient and less portable. In response to these challenges, this project was undertaken to design and fabricate an automatic machine for folding t-shirts. The other objective is to compare the time taken to fold 30 shirts manually versus autonomously. Utilising SolidWorks software, the device was carefully designed and brought to life using a prototype of the combination of an HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor, an Arduino Mega microprocessor and three MG996R servomotors. The Weighted Decision Matrix method evaluated four concept ideas, selecting the most promising concept for further development. After successful implementation, the clothes-folding machine underwent testing to assess whether it achieved the second study's goals. Its performance was evaluated by comparing the time taken for automatic folding versus manual labour. The results demonstrated a significant time reduction of 121.54 seconds for folding 30 t-shirts, or 34.77% in time efficiency when using the automated clothes-folding mechanism compared to manual folding.