Single-ply handling and feeding of limp aviation/hospitality linen and garments

In SATS Aero Laundry's operations, items such as aircraft and hotel bedding, F&B linen, uniforms and garments must be separated one-by-one from disordered piles, spread/oriented, and fed into folding, pressing or inspection machines. The material is limp, thin, and adopts effectively infinite crumpled configurations, with edges and ply counts that are visually ambiguous. The task sits between wash/dry stages and finishing, and today SATS' automation here is largely conveyor/overhead material-handling rather than dexterous manipulation. It is hard for a robot because grasping a single sheet from a tangled pile, finding its corners/edges, and presenting it flat requires feel for fabric tension and ply separation that vision struggles to resolve. We identified this through our own research; we have not confirmed the specifics with the customer directly. This page is our researched read — a starting point for that conversation.