Automatic Garment Accessories and Trims Removal for Recycling with Hard Trims Sorting

In the present project, we propose to develop and build an automatic garment accessories and trims removal system based on controlled cutting and opening of pre-sorted garments, accessories and trims recognition based on machine learning with visual and spectral data, as well as robust tweezing and picking of recognised trims.

Recycling post-consumer garment requires removal of hard accessories, such as buttons and zippers, as well as soft trims, such as seams or shirt collar before beginning the fibre recovery process. If these are not removed, the product quality tends to be inconsistent and fibre processing hardware may be damaged. Current method to remove trims and accessories is labour-intensive and lacks standard, resulting in lower productivity and varying output quality.