Exos Solutions is participating in the CLOTHIA project (CLOTH Inspection & Automation with AI), a strategic initiative co-funded by the European Union through IVACE+’s Strategic Cooperation Projects Programme.
This represents another step forward in our commitment to applied innovation and to developing technological solutions that deliver a tangible impact on both industry and sustainability.
A Clear Objective: Automating the Identification and Classification of Textile Garments
CLOTHIA has an ambitious yet highly specific purpose: to develop a comprehensive technological solution combining advanced robotics and Artificial Intelligence to identify, inspect and classify textile garments according to their condition and material composition.
In practice, this will enable faster and more reliable decisions about the optimal destination for each garment—reuse, repair or recycling—supporting more efficient textile waste management and contributing to a more scalable circular economy model.
The Textile Challenge: Working with Deformable and Variable Objects
Unlike other industrial environments where automation is already well established, the textile sector faces a key challenge: the deformable nature of garments.
Garments change shape, wrinkle, fold and present unpredictable geometries. This makes them difficult for conventional robots to handle and means that, even today, many sorting tasks are still carried out manually, with the resulting limitations in terms of efficiency, traceability and consistency.
This is compounded by a regulatory and market environment that is driving the adoption of more controlled, measurable and auditable processes, particularly when it comes to high-quality recycling and large-scale reuse.
CLOTHIA’s Technology Approach: Perception, Robotics and AI Working Together
To address this challenge, CLOTHIA is built around three complementary technological pillars:
Multimodal Perception to “Understand” Each Garment
The system will incorporate RGB cameras, hyperspectral imaging (NIR) and tactile sensors, with the aim of going beyond simply “seeing” a garment: identifying its composition, detecting relevant characteristics and obtaining useful information to determine how it should be classified.
Intelligent Robotics for Dexterous Manipulation
CLOTHIA will work with robotic arms
capable of manipulating deformable objects by adjusting gripping forces and positioning in real time. This is essential to making automation viable without damaging garments while maintaining stable operation.
Adaptive Artificial Intelligence to Determine the Optimal Destination
Using advanced machine learning algorithms, the system will be able to make automated decisions about the most appropriate treatment for each garment, prioritising reuse whenever possible and improving recycling quality when necessary.
A Direct Impact on Sustainability and Competitiveness
CLOTHIA’s value is not only technological; it is strategic. Automating and individualising garment inspection opens the door to:
- Reducing waste: by automating and individualising garment inspection, we can help give thousands of tonnes of textiles a second life, significantly reducing the sector’s carbon footprint.
- Improving operational efficiency in traditionally manual processes
- Providing traceability and consistency for critical decisions throughout the textile lifecycle
- Driving the digital transformation of a sector with significant potential for change
CLOTHIA is aligned with the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles and the European Green Deal.. A project developed through a strategic cooperation model alongside organisations and companies that play a key role in the innovation ecosystem: Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), AITEX, NUTAI, KOOPERA and Exos Solutions.
Our participation in CLOTHIA has been made possible thanks to the funding awarded by IVACE+ under the 2025 Strategic Cooperation Projects call, with co-financing from the European Union through European Funds.
At Exos, we contribute our experience in technology projects applied to real industrial environments, with a strong focus on turning innovation into operational, scalable solutions.
Participating in CLOTHIA reinforces our vision: technology must serve to solve specific challenges, improve processes and generate measurable impact, particularly in the fields of sustainability and the circular economy.
“European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) Programme for the Valencian Community 2021–2027”
