SewBot Is Revolutionizing the Clothing Manufacturing Industry February 19, 2018 : "This automated sewing research process began at Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center more than a decade ago. But the technology really started to take shape after a collaboration with the Walmart Foundation and a 2012 research grant for $1.25 million from DARPA, the Defense Department’s tech innovation department. While DARPA may seem like an unlikely funder for a clothing manufacturer, the military is required to buy clothing that’s made in the U.S., so this research would have a direct impact." Sewbot Sewing Robots
SoftWear Automation - SoftWear Automation is disrupting the $100 billion sewn products industry by creating autonomous sewn good worklines for Home Goods, Footwear & Apparel. The Atlanta-based machine vision and robotics startup spun out of Georgia Tech after 7 years of research and development working on projects with DARPA and the WALMART Foundation. SoftWear’s fully autonomous SEWBOT allows manufacturers to SEWLOCAL, moving their supply chains closer to the customer while creating higher quality products at a lower cost.
Fashion-focused Amazon wins patent for ‘on-demand apparel manufacturing’ by Monica Nickelsburg April 18, 2018 - "The Seattle e-commerce juggernaut just won a patent for “on-demand apparel manufacturing,” in which machines only start snipping and stitching once an order has been placed. The patent describes a system in which computer software collects clothing orders from all over the world and comes up with an efficient plan for fulfilling them. Orders “can be organized by the computing environment into one or more groups of orders based on one or more productivity factors, such as size, shape, fabric type, or delivery location for the textile products,” the patent says.
What's next?
Will we still need sewing machines?