There’s a lot of middle ground in between, there. Many businesspeople wouldn’t look “cute” in any style, but they still want clothes that are well-fitted for the shape they do have, and they’re willing to pay more than el cheapo prices for it.
OK, while we’re playing science fiction, maybe these wil go in the home. Maybe you get some kind of robotic mannequin made to match your measurements, and the fabric responds to some type of heat, light, or chemical treatment to expand or contract to the appropriate fit.
So if I had my mannequin, and I saw some fabric I liked, I could order the fabric and make a skirt that would fit me perfectly right in my own home, without complicated sewing, by just draping the fabric around the mannequin and heating it.
Many businesspeople wouldn’t look “cute” in any style, but they still want clothes that are well-fitted for the shape they do have
Thats fair, but what possible value could some mass produced synthetic laser robot thingy have over a tailor? Even price isnt a competitor if youre going to wear something that looks like a laser cut synthetic or whatever science fiction material we’re talking about here. It wont compete with human craftsmanship and will not be cotton or wool.
I dont see any added value over a human tailor. Tailoring just isnt that expensive and most people consider it the price of the suit. I know I do. Not to mention I also pay for the tailor’s expertise and advice on cuts and alterations.
Not to mention designers dont want to be hamstrung by having to deal with exotic materials. If they want cotton, they’ll design for cotton. If they want 100 buttons down the middle then they’ll get it. Tying their hands isnt going to help.
This idea is pretty typical of the halfbakeryand probably belongs there. Dont let me get in the way of greatness. If the OP likes this idea so much perhaps he can write a business plan and get a loan and get started on becoming a billionaire.
The exotic materials are only necessary if we’re talking about exotic methods. The OP was about using the same methods we’ve always used to make clothes, cutting shapes out of the fabric of one’s choice and then sewing them together, just done by a robot instead of by a human. There’s no reason you couldn’t use cotton or wool or silk or whatever you want for that, and make a suit that looks just like one made by a human tailor.
Okay, okay, we’ll take it in.
But Robot Arm, those robots didn’t have arms! :eek:
The OP was about using the same methods we’ve always used to make clothes, cutting shapes out of the fabric of one’s choice and then sewing them together, just done by a robot instead of by a human.
Id love to see a demonstration of a machine that can do this. It must deal with thousands of different cuts, millions of different scenarios, be as exact as a tailor, be able to undo errors, work without someone constantly adjusting it like a sewing machine, identify materials, cut materials, sew buttons and zippers, have computer vision, etc etc etc.
You cant just say “well, robots will do it.” Anyone who has worked with control machinery and robotics knows this stuff isnt at some sci-fi level and that advanced complex machines means breakdowns and cost. Robotics are good solutions for stamping out the same solution over and over, not necessarily great for custom solutions and having the accuracy of a tailor.
My reading of this question is that its asking “Why dont we just get rid of tailors and replace them with robots?” Ignoring market concerns I dont think this is technologically feasible.
Well, the current process of making cloths to standard sizes means that a human can arrange all the little parts on a computer to minimize waste, print out one sheet, that’s then pressed onto several layers of fabric (around 10 up to 20 depending on thickness) and cut with a special knife. There’s very little waste.
But it takes time to break a normal jeans in a certain size down into the 40 or more parts its made of, and in what order best sew them together.
If you have a human being scanned by a robot, in varying sizes, who translates the measurements into the “cut” of the woven (cotton/wool/mixture) cloth before it’s sewn together? And do you cut each suit individually from one sheet - a lot of waste! - or do you wait until enough orders have arrived? But with hundreds of different-sized parts - even a little as 1 cm in length will matter in this scenario - it will take an incredibly advanced program - or a human a lot of time - to distribute the seperate pieces onto one sheet to minimize loss.
Plus, a good suit isn’t defined simply by size. It’s the cut and proportion itself, the material and the colour, that makes a suit look good. That’s why tailors learn three years and have not only experience, but an eye and a feeling for proportion and taste. You can’t teach that to a robot.
And a clueless guy picking out the style of suit and colour beforehand will not have the experience of a tailor. Moreover, as a guy, you can already get a normal-sized suit in big store, and shorten the sleeves, widen the waist etc to adapt it to your size. (It’s unfair that the guys get their suits changed for free or little, while women have to pay through the nose, but that’s how the market is). Works very well currently.
To bring in an analogy, custom fabricating everyone’s clothing would be like having Frank Gehry design a subdivision - it’d be expensive as hell, it’d take five times as much material, and it would leak. I’ve done some work with this sort of computer-aided fabrication for architecture projects, and it takes a lot of human jiggling to make it run smoothly. You can generate a lovely, complicated 3D form (and the human body, in all its varieties, is nothing if not complicated), but getting from there to a sheet of lasercutter patterns is hardly a routine process. To do all that work (and much higher-wage work than a Laotian seamstress) just to end up with something that’s the same as what a tailor can do is, frankly, silly. I could maybe see a fad for the sort of custom-fab stuff that gets done in architecture - one-offs, unusual, things that couldn’t be done by hand - but not as a mall-booth fixture.
I have had several custom suits made in Los Angeles. If you live in a big city like LA or New York there are probably lots of tailors that will make you a custom suit.
It is not really much more expensive than getting a nice suit from a department store. There is the sales person who is probably also a tailor that measures you works with you to choose fabrics and cut of the suit. There are also quite a few people in the back room cutting and sewing things.
I have heard on the radio about shops in London where you get measured and choose the cut and fabric. This is sent off to some place in the far east where the cloths are made. This is then shipped back to London for the final fitting and minor adjustments. It is easy to imagine that some perhaps a lot of this could be done by robots. Things like cutting the cloth seem pretty amenable to automation. The people doing that now follow pretty easy to understand procedures. The assembly of the suit seems much more complicated to automate.
But robots and automation save money only if you make a lot of things. You need to sell a lot of suits to payoff a $10 million robo tailor.
like knit fabrics you mean?
maybe it will go in the other direction and they will mold us some membranes to wear