A Robotized Solution for Roughing the Uppers of Fashion Shoes

Currently, opposite to other manufacturing sectors like automotive, food or metal processing, robots are still out of Footwear industry; only technical shoe producers have introduced robots to assist in the injection moulding process but there are not other relevant applications in use. The described difficulties in shoe manufacturing ask for the use of state of the art robotic technology to reach the required degree of flexibility, autonomy and dexterity in order to make the robot a valuable resource for footwear companies. In this scenario, the paper describes an innovative robotic cell for robotized roughing operations. The robot controller has been designed to be easily integrated with standard industrial controller by exploiting the so-called sensor tracking option provided by many different robot suppliers. Experimental results are reported and demonstrate the feasibility of the solution proposed.