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Unfolding the Literature: A Review of Robotic Cloth Manipulation

Alberta Longhini, Yufei Wang, Irene Garcia-Camacho, David Blanco-Mulero, Marco Moletta, Michael Welle, Guillem Alenyà, Hang Yin, Zackory Erickson, David Held, Júlia Borràs, Danica Kragic

TL;DR

This work addresses the challenge of robustly manipulating textiles, which are inherently deformable and highly variable across materials and tasks. It synthesizes approaches across modeling, perception, and manipulation, emphasizing the need for generalization and realistic benchmarking to bridge the gap between simulation and real-world textiles. Key contributions include a structured survey of how textile variations are handled, the identification of open problems, and the articulation of grand challenges to guide future research. The findings highlight the practical impact of improving generalization for healthcare, household robots, and textile industries, enabling safer, more reliable, and cost-effective cloth manipulation in diverse settings.

Abstract

The realm of textiles spans clothing, households, healthcare, sports, and industrial applications. The deformable nature of these objects poses unique challenges that prior work on rigid objects cannot fully address. The increasing interest within the community in textile perception and manipulation has led to new methods that aim to address challenges in modeling, perception, and control, resulting in significant progress. However, this progress is often tailored to one specific textile or a subcategory of these textiles. To understand what restricts these methods and hinders current approaches from generalizing to a broader range of real-world textiles, this review provides an overview of the field, focusing specifically on how and to what extent textile variations are addressed in modeling, perception, benchmarking, and manipulation of textiles. We finally conclude by identifying key open problems and outlining grand challenges that will drive future advancements in the field.

Unfolding the Literature: A Review of Robotic Cloth Manipulation

TL;DR

This work addresses the challenge of robustly manipulating textiles, which are inherently deformable and highly variable across materials and tasks. It synthesizes approaches across modeling, perception, and manipulation, emphasizing the need for generalization and realistic benchmarking to bridge the gap between simulation and real-world textiles. Key contributions include a structured survey of how textile variations are handled, the identification of open problems, and the articulation of grand challenges to guide future research. The findings highlight the practical impact of improving generalization for healthcare, household robots, and textile industries, enabling safer, more reliable, and cost-effective cloth manipulation in diverse settings.

Abstract

The realm of textiles spans clothing, households, healthcare, sports, and industrial applications. The deformable nature of these objects poses unique challenges that prior work on rigid objects cannot fully address. The increasing interest within the community in textile perception and manipulation has led to new methods that aim to address challenges in modeling, perception, and control, resulting in significant progress. However, this progress is often tailored to one specific textile or a subcategory of these textiles. To understand what restricts these methods and hinders current approaches from generalizing to a broader range of real-world textiles, this review provides an overview of the field, focusing specifically on how and to what extent textile variations are addressed in modeling, perception, benchmarking, and manipulation of textiles. We finally conclude by identifying key open problems and outlining grand challenges that will drive future advancements in the field.
Paper Structure (10 sections, 1 figure, 1 table)

This paper contains 10 sections, 1 figure, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. INTRODUCTION
  2. FUNDAMENTALS
  3. Textiles, Fabrics, and Cloths
  4. APPLICATIONS AREAS
  5. Healthcare
  6. Household chores
  7. Textile Industry
  8. DISCUSSION AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES
  9. Open Problems
  10. Grand Challenges

Figures (1)

  • Figure 1: Manufacturing process of textiles: textile is an umbrella term that covers materials that are made of interlacing natural or synthetic fibers. The figure depicts the textile production process in its different stages, where yellow boxes represent materials and objects, while blue blocks specify the processing step.