I agree with your general characterization of the area. For sewing though, Sewbots appears production-ready and does not require starching the fabric. What do you think of it?
20% real, 80% hype. There's lots of partial automation in apparel, but handling fabric is still very tough. Especially for operations after the first one, where you have to deal with a non-flat unit of several pieces sewn together. They apparently can make T-shirts, but not jeans.
They're not doing manipulation in an unstructured environment. They're trying to structure apparel sewing rigidly enough that they need a bare minimum of adaptation to variations. That's how production lines work.
http://softwearautomation.com/products/