Learning Dense Visual Correspondences in Simulation to Smooth and Fold Real Fabrics
Robotic fabric manipulation is challenging due to the infinite dimensional configuration space, self-occlusion, and complex dynamics of fabrics. There has been significant prior work on learning policies for specific deformable manipulation tasks, but comparatively less focus on algorithms which can efficiently learn many different tasks.
Evidence notes
- YuMi (IRB 14000 Dual-arm) is the evaluation platform used to test the method and reported findings.
Company context
ABB is a publicly listed electrification and automation group. It currently owns ABB Robotics, whose signed sale to SoftBank remains pending, while Machine Automation continues inside ABB's Automation business.