Automated Sewing System Enabled by Machine Vision for Smart Garment Manufacturing

This letter presents an automated sewing system designed for smart garment manufacturing, incorporating machine vision capabilities into a custom-built sewing machine. The vision system captures an image of the fabric pattern placed between two acrylic plates with a small opening, utilizing a deep learning model to detect and segment the opening, which represents the area of interest on the plate. Subsequently, a specialized algorithm detects a narrow seam line within the segmented image and generates a stitching path alongside the seam line, ensuring a consistent distance. The sewing machine then accurately stitches along the generated path automatically. The vision system utilized in this study achieves a spatial resolution of 68$\mu$m per pixel. The custom-built sewing machine, controlled by an external computer, exhibits a spatial resolution of 10$\mu$m, a translation speed of 60 mm/…