Industrial Robots in the Textile and Clothing Industry

Industrial robots play a crucial role in the era of Industry 4.0, characterized by the advancement of digitalization and automation. This development trend is strongly felt in the textile and clothing industry, too, and cannot be ignored when developing production facilities to streamline manufacturing processes. Industrial robots enable more efficient manufacturing processes, especially in repetitive and physically demanding tasks. Their aim is to serve production machines efficiently and autonomously, not to produce the product itself, but to support the production machine. This is particularly important in sectors such as the textile and clothing industry, which typically have a very high demand for labor. The article summarizes the main differences between simple mechanical machines, automated machines, and robots: simple mechanical machines require human intervention and have a fixed function, automated machines operate based on pre-programmed instructions and are moderately flexible, while robots are fully programmable, capable of adapting to changing tasks and operating autonomously, making decisions with the help of sensors. The article – based on real, working examples found on the internet, listed at the end of the article – presents the use of robots in the textile and clothing industry, which facilitate work in warehousing, yarn production, dyeing, fabric inspection, sewing, and textile cleaning. We aimed to engage textile and clothing companies by presenting these opportunities. However, the social impacts of robotization cannot be ignored. If simple manual labor is replaced by robots, people performing such work must be retrained for more productive tasks so that they do not lose their livelihoods. This imposes responsibilities on both the state and companies, which must provide retraining opportunities.