mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Challenges and Outlook in Robotic Manipulation of Deformable Objects

arXiv 2105.01767 ↗First posted 4 May 2021cs.ROcited by 43

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Abstract (arXiv)

Deformable object manipulation (DOM) is an emerging research problem in robotics. The ability to manipulate deformable objects endows robots with higher autonomy and promises new applications in the industrial, services, and healthcare sectors. However, compared to rigid object manipulation, the manipulation of deformable objects is considerably more complex, and is still an open research problem. Addressing DOM challenges demand breakthroughs in almost all aspects of robotics, namely hardware design, sensing, (deformation) modeling, planning, and control. In this article, we review recent advances and highlight the main challenges when considering deformation in each sub-field. A particular focus of our paper lies in the discussions of these challenges and proposing future directions of research.

Key facts. Cited by 43 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 4 May 2021.

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 2; 2023: 11; 2024: 6; 2025: 15; 2026: 9.

43 papers.

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  1. 2022SpeedFolding: Learning Efficient Bimanual Folding of Garmentscited by 51
  2. 2024A Survey of Embodied Learning for Object-Centric Robotic Manipulationcited by 34
  3. 2025ManipBench: Benchmarking Vision-Language Models for Low-Level Robot Manipulationcited by 24
  4. 2023ClothesNet: An Information-Rich 3D Garment Model Repository with Simulated Clothes Environmentcited by 22
  5. 2024Learning Keypoints for Robotic Cloth Manipulation using Synthetic Datacited by 11
  6. 2022EDO-Net: Learning Elastic Properties of Deformable Objects from Graph Dynamicscited by 10
  7. 2023Neural Autoencoder-Based Structure-Preserving Model Order Reduction and Control Design for High-Dimensional Physical Systemscited by 7
  8. 2025Cloth-Splatting: 3D Cloth State Estimation from RGB Supervisioncited by 7
  9. 2026RoboCurate: Harnessing Diversity with Action-Verified Neural Trajectory for Robot Learningcited by 7
  10. 2026From Reaction to Anticipation: Proactive Failure Recovery through Agentic Task Graph for Robotic Manipulationcited by 6
  11. 2025InstructionBench: An Instructional Video Understanding Benchmarkcited by 5
  12. 2023DeformerNet: Learning Bimanual Manipulation of 3D Deformable Objectscited by 4
31 more
  1. 2023DexDLO: Learning Goal-Conditioned Dexterous Policy for Dynamic Manipulation of Deformable Linear Objectscited by 4
  2. 2023A Systematic Literature Review of Computer Vision Applications in Robotized Wire Harness Assemblycited by 3
  3. 2023DefGoalNet: Contextual Goal Learning from Demonstrations For Deformable Object Manipulationcited by 3
  4. 2025GraphGarment: Learning Garment Dynamics for Bimanual Cloth Manipulation Taskscited by 3
  5. 2025Robot Deformable Object Manipulation via NMPC-generated Demonstrations in Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 2
  6. 2025Implicit Neural-Representation Learning for Elastic Deformable-Object Manipulationscited by 2
  7. 2026Preference Aligned Visuomotor Diffusion Policies for Deformable Object Manipulationcited by 2
  8. 2026SoftVTBench: A Safety-Aware Visuo-Tactile Benchmark for Physically Constrained Robotic Manipulation of Deformable Objects (Early Version)cited by 2
  9. 2023Learning visual-based deformable object rearrangement with local graph neural networkscited by 1
  10. 2023Learning to bag with a simulation-free reinforcement learning framework for robotscited by 1
  11. 2023Make a Donut: Hierarchical EMD-Space Planning for Zero-Shot Deformable Manipulation with Toolscited by 1
  12. 2024Offline Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning for Shape Control of Deformable Linear Objectscited by 1
  13. 2024Conditional Variational Auto Encoder Based Dynamic Motion for Multi-task Imitation Learningcited by 1
  14. 2024RaggeDi: Diffusion-based State Estimation of Disordered Rags, Sheets, Towels and Blanketscited by 1
  15. 2024SKT: Integrating State-Aware Keypoint Trajectories with Vision-Language Models for Robotic Garment Manipulationcited by 1
  16. 2025DEFT: Differentiable Branched Discrete Elastic Rods for Modeling Furcated DLOs in Real-Timecited by 1
  17. 2025Sim2Real Transfer for Vision-Based Grasp Verificationcited by 1
  18. 2025SCOOP'D: Learning Mixed-Liquid-Solid Scooping via Sim2Real Generative Policycited by 1
  19. 2023Robotic Fabric Flattening with Wrinkle Direction Detectioncited by 0
  20. 2023Reinforcement Learning-Based Bionic Reflex Control for Anthropomorphic Robotic Grasping exploiting Domain Randomizationcited by 0
  21. 2025Acoustic Wave Manipulation Through Sparse Robotic Actuationcited by 0
  22. 2025Deformable Linear Object Surface Placement Using Elastica Planning and Local Shape Controlcited by 0
  23. 2025DiffDef: A Diffusion Model for Generating Multimodal Goal Shapes From Demonstrations for Deformable Object Manipulationcited by 0
  24. 2025Deformable Cluster Manipulation via Whole-Arm Policy Learningcited by 0
  25. 2025FCBV-Net: Category-Level Robotic Garment Smoothing via Feature-Conditioned Bimanual Value Predictioncited by 0
  26. 2025Generalizing Shape-from-Template to Topological Changescited by 0
  27. 2026DefVINS: Visual-Inertial Odometry for Deformable Scenescited by 0
  28. 2026TWISTED-RL: Hierarchical Skilled Agents for Knot-Tying without Human Demonstrationscited by 0
  29. 2026TrackDeform3D: Markerless and Autonomous 3D Keypoint Tracking and Dataset Collection for Deformable Objectscited by 0
  30. 2026ViTac-Tracing: Visual-Tactile Imitation Learning of Deformable Object Tracingcited by 0
  31. 2026Learning Sim-Grounded Policies for Bimanual Rope Manipulation from Human Teleoperation Datacited by 0