Planning strategy for task of unfolding clothes

Research on saving labor of household work and automation for housekeeping robots has gained importance due to the growing population and fast advance ment in electronics. Improvements are made in such a way that a robot can d eal with a variety of "nonsolid" household objects. We have studied the tec hnology by which a robot handles nonsolid objects, for example, putting clo thes in order at a specified site. Concrete subtasks involve removing a clo th from the washing machine, spreading out, classifying, folding, and putti ng it in a specified place. This paper proposes an "unfolding" planning str ategy. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.