Abstract
We consider how the tedious chore of folding clothes can be performed by a robot. At the core of our approach is the definition of a cloth model that allows us to reason about the geometry rather than the physics of the cloth in significant parts of the state space. We present an algorithm that, given the geometry of the cloth, computes how many grippers are needed and what the motion of these grippers are to achieve a final configuration specified as a sequence of g − folds—folds that can be achieved while staying in the subset of the state space to which the geometric model applies. G-folds are easy to specify and are sufficiently rich to capture most common cloth folding procedures.We consider folds involving single and stacked layers of material and describe experiments folding towels, shirts, sweaters, and slacks with a Willow Garage PR2 robot. Experiments based on the planner had success rates varying between 5/9 and 9/9 for different clothing articles.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Balkcom, D., Mason, M.: Robotic origami folding. Int. J. on Robotics Research 27(5), 613–627 (2008)
Baraff, D., Witkin, A.: Large steps in cloth simulation. In: Proc. SIGGRAPH (1998)
Bell, M.: Flexible object manipulation. PhD Thesis, Dartmouth College (2010)
Bell, M., Balkcom, D.: Grasping non-stretchable cloth polygons. Int. Journal of Robotics Research 29, 775–784 (2010)
Bridson, R., Fedkiw, R., Anderson, J.: Robust treatment of collisions, contact, and friction for cloth animation. In: Proc. SIGGRAPH (2002)
Choi, K., Ko, H.: Stable but responsive cloth. In: Proc. SIGGRAPH (2002)
Fahantidis, N., Paraschidis, K., Petridis, V., Doulgeri, Z., Petrou, L., Hasapis, G.: Robot handling of flat textile materials. IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine 4(1), 34–41 (1997)
Gupta, S., Bourne, D., Kim, K., Krishnan, S.: Automated process planning for robotic sheet metal bending operations. Journal of Manufacturing Systems 17, 338–360 (1998)
Kanade, T.: A theory of origami world. Artificial Intelligence 13(3), 279–311 (1980)
Lang, R.: A computational algorithm for origami design. In: Proc. Symp. on Computational Geometry (1996)
Liu, J., Dai, J.: An approach to carton-folding trajectory planning using dual robotic fingers. Robotics and Autonomous Systems 42, 47–63 (2003)
Maitin-Shepard, J., Cusumano-Towner, M., Lei, J., Abbeel, P.: Cloth grasp point detection based on multiple-view geometric cues with application to robotic towel folding. In: Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (2010)
Lu, L., Akella, S.: Folding cartons with fixtures: a motion planning approach. IEEE Trans. on Robotics and Automation 16(4), 346–356 (2000)
Osawa, F., Seki, H., Kamiya, Y.: Clothes folding task by tool-using robot. Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics (2006)
Wyrobek, K., Berger, E., Van der Loos, H.F.M., Salisbury, K.: Towards a Personal Robotics Development Platform: Rationale and Design of an Intrinsically Safe Personal Robot. In: Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (2008)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
van den Berg, J., Miller, S., Goldberg, K., Abbeel, P. (2010). Gravity-Based Robotic Cloth Folding. In: Hsu, D., Isler, V., Latombe, JC., Lin, M.C. (eds) Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics IX. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 68. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17452-0_24
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17452-0_24
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-17451-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-17452-0
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)