Programme time: 13-Oct | 17:00 | 60 min
Room: Infante Room (Catalyst Marketplace)

Moderator: TBC
Speakers
•     TBC

Full description and objectives

The textile and clothing (T&C) sector is facing a decisive moment: labour shortages, sustainability pressures, and increasing demand for flexibility are pushing manufacturers to rethink production. Portugal has maintained a strong industrial base, positioning itself at the forefront of Europe's digital reindustrialisation, and TEXP@CT, a 40-entity national Innovation Pact co-funded by the Recovery and Resilience Programme, is a concrete expression of that ambition.

This workshop presents two main robotic systems developed and validated within TEXP@CT, forming the backbone of a vision for fully automated garment production, from digital cutting table to finished garment. Robotic Handling Cell automatically picks cut parts and organises them into ordered stacks, eliminating manual sorting between cutting and sewing and removing a key production bottleneck. Robotic Sewing Cell receives those stacks and produces finished garments with minimal operator input, covering alignment, side and shoulder seams, and tubular hemming in a single integrated sequence.

Through a structured panel with voices from R&D, system integration, and industrial end-users, the session explores three questions: Where does automation in T&C manufacturing stand today, technically and commercially? How do we scale from isolated robotic cells to a truly connected smart factory? And what human skills and collaborative models does this new industrial paradigm demand?

Attendees will leave with concrete lessons on translating ADR research into industrial value in one of Europe's most labour-intensive and strategically relevant manufacturing sectors.

Why you want to join?

This session is grounded in Robotics and AI as inseparable enablers of automation in flexible material manufacturing. The two systems presented, a robotic handling cell and a robotic sewing cell, are physical embodiments of the robotics discipline: custom gripper design, robot-guided fabric manipulation, and modular cell architecture.

AI is not a peripheral component in these systems, it is what makes them work. The handling cell relies on a detection pipeline combining Top-Down approach to identify optimal grasp points across varying garment shapes, textile textures, and lighting conditions. The sewing cell uses vision-guided alignment to match each fabric panel to its DXF pattern in real time, ensuring seams follow the intended digital design without manual intervention.

Together, these two areas define the session's core contribution: demonstrating that the combination of robotics and AI can overcome one of the longest-standing open problems in industrial automation, the reliable manipulation of flexible materials, and deliver measurable industrial value in a strategically relevant European manufacturing sector.

Running agenda