mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Learning Deformable Object Manipulation from Expert Demonstrations

arXiv 2207.10148 ↗First posted 20 Jul 2022cs.RO cs.AI cs.LGcited by 19

On the map: Offline RL and imitation learning from data → Robot manipulation imitation learning

Abstract (arXiv)

We present a novel Learning from Demonstration (LfD) method, Deformable Manipulation from Demonstrations (DMfD), to solve deformable manipulation tasks using states or images as inputs, given expert demonstrations. Our method uses demonstrations in three different ways, and balances the trade-off between exploring the environment online and using guidance from experts to explore high dimensional spaces effectively. We test DMfD on a set of representative manipulation tasks for a 1-dimensional rope and a 2-dimensional cloth from the SoftGym suite of tasks, each with state and image observations. Our method exceeds baseline performance by up to 12.9% for state-based tasks and up to 33.44% on image-based tasks, with comparable or better robustness to randomness. Additionally, we create two challenging environments for folding a 2D cloth using image-based observations, and set a performance benchmark for them. We deploy DMfD on a real robot with a minimal loss in normalized performance during real-world execution compared to simulation (~6%). Source code is on github.com/uscresl/dmfd

Key facts. Cited by 19 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Robot manipulation imitation learning, one of 13 directions in Offline RL and imitation learning from data. Builds on 26 of its 40 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 Jul 2022.

Builds on

26 of 40 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2021Distilling Motion Planner Augmented Policies into Visual Control Policies for Robot Manipulation11 Nov
  2. 2018Reinforcement and Imitation Learning for Diverse Visuomotor Skills26 Feb

Other references · 24

  1. 2018Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actorcited by 4,885
  2. 2020Offline Reinforcement Learning: Tutorial, Review, and Perspectives on Open Problemscited by 1,920
  3. 2016Generative Adversarial Imitation Learningcited by 1,597
  4. 2018Learning Latent Dynamics for Planning from Pixelscited by 1,264
  5. 2019Advantage-Weighted Regression: Simple and Scalable Off-Policy Reinforcement Learningcited by 782
  6. 2020CURL: Contrastive Unsupervised Representations for Reinforcement Learningcited by 760
  7. 2017Learning Complex Dexterous Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrationscited by 715
  8. 2020AWAC: Accelerating Online Reinforcement Learning with Offline Datasetscited by 671
  9. 2020Image Augmentation Is All You Need: Regularizing Deep Reinforcement Learning from Pixelscited by 585
  10. 2018Behavioral Cloning from Observationcited by 492
  11. 2017Overcoming Exploration in Reinforcement Learning with Demonstrationscited by 340
  12. 2021Bridging Offline Reinforcement Learning and Imitation Learning: A Tale of Pessimismcited by 279
12 more
  1. 2018Distributed Prioritized Experience Replaycited by 269
  2. 2017Asymmetric Actor Critic for Image-Based Robot Learningcited by 238
  3. 2017DART: Noise Injection for Robust Imitation Learningcited by 191
  4. 2018Sim-to-Real Reinforcement Learning for Deformable Object Manipulationcited by 131
  5. 2018Learning Synergies between Pushing and Grasping with Self-supervised Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 128
  6. 2020SoftGym: Benchmarking Deep Reinforcement Learning for Deformable Object Manipulationcited by 121
  7. 2020Learning to Rearrange Deformable Cables, Fabrics, and Bags with Goal-Conditioned Transporter Networkscited by 78
  8. 2019Learning to Manipulate Deformable Objects without Demonstrationscited by 77
  9. 2017BBQ-Networks: Efficient Exploration in Deep Reinforcement Learning for Task-Oriented Dialogue Systemscited by 30
  10. 2019Mechanical Search: Multi-Step Retrieval of a Target Object Occluded by Cluttercited by 30
  11. 2019AC-Teach: A Bayesian Actor-Critic Method for Policy Learning with an Ensemble of Suboptimal Teacherscited by 28
  12. 2020Motion Planner Augmented Reinforcement Learning for Robot Manipulation in Obstructed Environmentscited by 23

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 1; 2023: 6; 2024: 3; 2025: 7; 2026: 2.

19 papers.

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  1. 2024Scaling Proprioceptive-Visual Learning with Heterogeneous Pre-trained Transformerscited by 148
  2. 2023Benchmarking the Sim-to-Real Gap in Cloth Manipulationcited by 17
  3. 2025A Survey on Imitation Learning for Contact-Rich Tasks in Roboticscited by 14
  4. 2025Exploring Embodied Multimodal Large Models: Development, Datasets, and Future Directionscited by 13
  5. 2022EDO-Net: Learning Elastic Properties of Deformable Objects from Graph Dynamicscited by 10
  6. 2023Foldsformer: Learning Sequential Multi-Step Cloth Manipulation With Space-Time Attentioncited by 10
  7. 2023Learning Robot Manipulation from Cross-Morphology Demonstrationcited by 8
  8. 2024TraKDis: A Transformer-based Knowledge Distillation Approach for Visual Reinforcement Learning with Application to Cloth Manipulationcited by 8
  9. 2025Cloth-Splatting: 3D Cloth State Estimation from RGB Supervisioncited by 8
  10. 2023DiffVL: Scaling Up Soft Body Manipulation using Vision-Language Driven Differentiable Physicscited by 6
  11. 2024General-purpose Clothes Manipulation with Semantic Keypointscited by 5
  12. 2026Robustness without Wrinkles: Parallel Simulation and Robust MPC for Certified Deformable Manipulationcited by 3
7 more
  1. 2023Machine Learning Meets Advanced Robotic Manipulationcited by 2
  2. 2025Implicit Neural-Representation Learning for Elastic Deformable-Object Manipulationscited by 2
  3. 2025CLASP: General-Purpose Clothes Manipulation with Semantic Keypointscited by 1
  4. 2025MoDeSuite: Robot Learning Task Suite for Benchmarking Mobile Manipulation with Deformable Objectscited by 1
  5. 2023Robotic Fabric Flattening with Wrinkle Direction Detectioncited by 0
  6. 2025DRIVE: Dynamic Rule Inference and Verified Evaluation for Constraint-Aware Autonomous Drivingcited by 0
  7. 2026Disentangling perception and reasoning for improving data efficiency in learning cloth manipulation without demonstrationscited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Instant-Fold: In-Context Imitation Learning for Deformable Object Manipulation
  2. 2023DeformGS: Scene Flow in Highly Deformable Scenes for Deformable Object Manipulation
  3. 2026Learning to unfold cloth: Scaling up world models to deformable object manipulation
  4. 2025Dynamic Manipulation of Deformable Objects in 3D: Simulation, Benchmark and Learning Strategy
  5. 2025Robot Deformable Object Manipulation via NMPC-generated Demonstrations in Deep Reinforcement Learning
  6. 2026Learning Forward & Reverse Skills from a Single Unfinished Demonstration for Constrained Manipulation Tasks
  7. 2024Dynamic Manipulation of Deformable Objects using Imitation Learning with Adaptation to Hardware Constraints
  8. 2026A Perspective on Open Challenges in Deformable Object Manipulation ↗