3D Inescop Footwear Software: A Virtual Alternative to Traditional Design and Pattern Engineering

INESCOP is a Centre for Technology and Innovation, founded in 1971 as a private and non-profit making association. With more than 45 years of experience, the Institute works to provide technology services, transfer knowledge and conduct research on general relevant topics for the footwear sector.

3D Inescop Footwear Softwarel

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Since 1971, INESCOP works to provide technology services, transfer knowledge and conduct research on relevant topics for the footwear sector. We foster innovation in the footwear industries by offering solutions adapted to their scientific and technical needs, thus providing a wide range of technological services aimed at enhancing the quality and performance of products and boosting business competitiveness in areas such as:

Additive manufacturing may increase competiveness of the footwear industry, since it provides more technically and functionally advanced components that offer an immediate response to the changing market needs

The CAD process has been subject to the inherent limitations of traditional manufacturing methods, since the product design must be made considering how and by what means it is going to be manufactured. The emergence of additive manufacturing has put an end to these limitations, and therefore, it is necessary to provide specific design tools that can take full advantage of the possibilities that this manufacturing method entails. In line with this, INESCOP aims to develop CAD design tools that can be used along with 3D printing and can be implemented by footwear companies, especially those with state-of-the-art and quite restrictive technologies, such as Polyjet 3D printing.

Additive manufacturing provides footwear with new properties by introducing modifications in the 3D design. In this sense, INESCOP seeks to establish design procedures that can modify anti-slip, cushioning and hardness properties, and make them available for the companies of the sector.

Another substantial research line as regards additive manufacturing is the functionalisation of 3D printing materials. The properties envisaged are of great relevance for certain production environments. One example of this is providing the manufacturing material of footwear outsoles with antimicrobial properties so as to avoid biological contamination caused by the movement of operators.

The footwear CAD solution Icad 3D was developed by INESCOP (partner P1) and RED 21 (partner P5) is faster and more precise than other commercial products, and gives an immediate feedback both to teacher and to student/trainee. It allows detailed and accurate visualization of footwear prototypes in a virtual space. Through INGA 3D, the knowledge and the skills for developing patterns and footwear prototypes will be transmitted by VET teachers and trainers to their students and trainees in a dynamic and effective way. It will stimulate creative thinking among VET students and trainees, and it will increase attractiveness of VET study/training programs.

The project products (Handbook, Guide and Internet-based platform) will introduce innovative training content and solutions for e- learning in order to test and to validate new teaching methodologies and approaches suitable for vocational training in footwear computer-aided design. These products will be designed and developed in order to meet the needs and the expectations of VET professionals (teachers, trainers, tutors). The online platform will integrate various flexible learning scenarios for accommodating various supportive tools for learning, like tutorial lessons, videos, and interactive texts and listening.

ICad 3D+ is the first software for footwear design and pattern engineering that integrates into a single program two different environments, virtual 3D and technical 2D, which work in parallel and simultaneously. This way, ICad 3D+ is presented as the best virtual alternative to the traditional process of design and pattern engineering, reducing the time spent as well as the material and human resources of the company.

Design, create and modify footwear models, and their patterns, parallel and simultaneously in 3D or 2D with absolute reliability and precision. Make flattenings of any last, including boots and ankle boots, with total accuracy. Modify with a simple "click" The flattened, avoiding the repetition of the processes that would have to be carried out if these modifications were made manually. Create, or import, flats, heels, ornaments and accessories quickly and easily, thanks to its intuitive interface. Customize and get images that look as hyper-realistic as a photograph taken from real shoe models. Simulate shoe loosening by adding realism to your models.

ICad3D+ is the first software for footwear design and pattern engineering than integrates into a single program two different environments, 3D design and 2D patterns, which works in parallel and simultaneously. This way, ICad3D+ is presented as the best virtual alternative to the traditional process of design and pattern engineering, reducing the time spent as well as the material and human resources of the company.

Accelerate the design process and the development of all types of footwear through the use of the most advanced and innovative CAD / CAM solutions on the market, reducing costs, improving quality and increasing the productivity and competitiveness of your business.

In this paper, we present a robotic workcell for task automation in footwear manufacturing such as sole digitization, glue dispensing, and sole manipulation from different places within the factory plant. We aim to make progress towards shoe industry 4.0. To achieve it, we have implemented a novel sole grasping method, compatible with soles of different shapes, sizes, and materials, by exploiting the particular characteristics of these objects. Our proposal is able to work well with low density point clouds from a single RGBD camera and also with dense point clouds obtained from a laser scanner digitizer. The method computes antipodal grasping points from visual data in both cases and it does not require a previous recognition of sole. It relies on sole contour extraction using concave hulls and measuring the curvature on contour areas. Our method was tested both in a simulated environment and in real conditions of manufacturing at INESCOP facilities, processing 20 soles with different sizes and characteristics. Grasps were performed in two different configurations, obtaining an average score of 97.5% of successful real grasps for soles without heel made with materials of low or medium flexibility. In both cases, the grasping method was tested without carrying out tactile control throughout the task.

Traditionally, use of technology in footwear manufacturing has been mainly focused on applying CAD/CAM processes to improve shoe appearance and ergonomics [1]. Technology enables the shoe industry to reduce defects, achieve high-quality standards [2], and perform personalized pieces [3]. Besides, virtual reality (VR) technologies are being successfully applied to create new footwear models, providing interactive experiences for the visualization of fashion shoes [4].

Throughout the last decades, many efforts have been made by the shoe industry to fully or partially automate some parts of the manufacturing process [5]. However, shoe making involves many tasks, and many of them still employ human operators. Some of these tasks are done by a worker using manual shoe making tools, while others involve human interaction with a specific machine, i.e., material cutting of each shoe pattern, sewing machines for stitching, cementing and pressing machines for assembling parts together, etc. For this reason, the future of automation in footwear industry will require promoting the use of robots [6]. In state of the art, there are innovative solutions combining image processing [1, 7] or 3D visual perception with robots [8], e.g., to generate trajectories to cut leather [9] or for robot shoe-groove tracking from feature extraction on the surface of a scanned shoe upper [10]. Furthermore, we can find shoe glue application systems based on visual techniques using shape reconstruction and guided by robotic end-effectors [11, 12], and kinematic control of robots to perform buffing and roughing operations on shoe uppers [13, 14]. Moreover, robots have also been introduced in other finishing operations such as polishing cream and spraying [15] or collaborating with humans in shoe-packaging process [16]. However, there are tasks where robots have not been introduced yet or they have not been correctly adapted to the variability of the manufacturing process.

In this work, we propose a robotic workcell with a novel visual perception method to compute grasping points in two different scenarios that occur in the manufacturing process. The first scenario consists of soles travelling on a conveyor belt, while the second has soles resting on a custom location. Fashion trends induce high variability in shoe shape and make the grasping task challenging. Recently, reinforcement learning techniques driven by computer vision were used to perform isolated operations of shoe grasping [17]. Even with these techniques, it is still difficult to accomplish a re-configurable robotic workcell at a competitive working speed. Our work is inspired by [18], but, unlike this one, our cell works without the support of other specific machines (e.g., for roughing and cementing). In that work, authors tested the proposal with only one type of shoe, while our system has been tested with 20 different models. Footwear grasping is also present in [19], where authors defined a system to perform pick-and-place operations on the last taking 3D model templates as references. We propose to increase system flexibility without using templates or prior knowledge of the shoe model, and without relying on reinforcement learning. Our goal is to move towards a flexible and automated footwear industry 4.0 according to the fundamental underlying design principle presented in [20]. 2ff7e9595c