Coupling cloth and rigid bodies for dexterous manipulation

Abstract

This paper introduces a new simulation technique to enable detailed dexterous manipulation of cloth. Without reimplementation or substantial modification, existing cloth simulators can only be used to approximate limited interaction between cloth and rigid bodies due to the incorrect computation of contact forces. For example, a simple scenario of two fingers pinching a piece of cloth often results in the cloth slipping out of the hand. Our technique provides a simple solution to cloth-rigid coupling using existing cloth and rigid body simulators as-is. We develop a light-weight interface so that the rigid body and cloth simulators communicate on a demand-driven manner to achieve two main goals: allow the rigid bodies to impart friction forces to the cloth and avoid unsolvable collision situations between the rigid bodies and the cloth. We demonstrate a set of basic manipulation skills including gripping, pinching, and pressing, that are frequently seen in daily activities such as dressing and folding clothes.

Dexterous Manipulation of Cloth

“…The simulator is built upon two open‐source projects: ARCSim [NSO12, NPO13, PNdJO14] for cloth simulation and DART [LJ12] for multibody simulation. We couple the simulation of cloth and hands using the contact model proposed by Bai et al [BL14b].…”

“…Likewise, simulated hands will not be able to create budges or wrinkles on the cloth without appropriate friction forces. Researchers have proposed various methods to handle two‐way coupling between rigid bodies and deformable bodies [JV03, SSIF07, SSF08, OTSG09, MO11, SVAC12, BL14b]. Recently, Bai et al proposed a method to couple cloth and rigid body simulation using the existing simulators as black box [BL14b].…”

“…Researchers have proposed various methods to handle two‐way coupling between rigid bodies and deformable bodies [JV03, SSIF07, SSF08, OTSG09, MO11, SVAC12, BL14b]. Recently, Bai et al proposed a method to couple cloth and rigid body simulation using the existing simulators as black box [BL14b]. Their method allows rigid bodies to impart friction forces on cloth and avoids unsolvable collision situations between the rigid bodies and the cloth.…”

Personalized Assistance for Dressing Users

“…Much prior work has focused on the problem of clothing manipulation in simulation [3] and also in the real world [7,9,14]. Our work is more focused on the additional challenges posed when a person is involved.…”