Design and simulation of non-rigid materials handling systems Original Research Article

The paper presents a software environment to model and simulate non-rigid materials behaviour during handling operations according to their physical properties (e.g. stiffness), and to detect undesirable deformations (e.g., material breakage). The system provides a graphical and integrated environment for modelling and graphically simulating rigid objects (e.g. robot arm, gripper) combined with flexible products (e.g. garment, meat). It consists of three main modules: a module to geometrically model the workspace and the robot composing the automated handling system, a module to physically model and simulate the behaviour of flexible materials and finally a module for robot off-line programming. An approximated and descretised model has been adopted to describe non-rigid materials in order to incorporate both its geometric and physical properties. To show the functionality of the system, the simulation of an industrial operation (automated folding of a cotton sleeve) is illustrated.