Pentagon dishes out $1.3 million to develop unmanned sewing machine

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Pentagon’s venture capital arm has dished out $1.3 million to technology developer Softwear Automation to build an unmanned sewing machine, documents reveal, according to Mashable.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-supported experiment seeks to help the garment manufacturing industry reduce its reliance on assembly line workers.

The funding would go into development of a “numerically controlled sewing machine” that counts threads in fabric to automatically shift garments under construction as stitches are executed by a computer program, a contract notice states. The goal is to create an industrial process of making clothes without an actual machine operator.

Softwear Automation is the brainchild of Steve Dickerson, a robotics and engineering researcher.

According to the contract document, “Complete production facilities that produce garments with zero direct labor is the ultimate goal.”