Static Stability of Robotic Fabric Strip Folding
This addresses the problem of accurate manipulation planning for deformable objects like fabrics, which is incremental as it assesses existing methods in the presence of instability.
The paper studied static instability in robotic fabric strip folding, showing that one existing folding path works for fabrics with internal friction while another dynamic path is suitable for ideal elastic materials.
Planning accurate manipulation for deformable objects requires prediction of their state. The prediction is often complicated by a loss of stability that may result in collapse of the deformable object. In this work, stability of a fabric strip folding performed by a robot is studied. We show that there is a static instability in the folding process. This instability is detected in a physics-based simulation and the position of the instability is verified experimentally by real robotic manipulation. Three state-of-the-art methods for folding are assessed in the presence of static instability. It is shown that one of the existing folding paths is suitable for folding of materials with internal friction such as fabrics. Another folding path that utilizes dynamic motion exists for ideal elastic materials without internal friction. Our results show that instability needs to be considered in planning to obtain accurate manipulation of deformable objects.