# Unfolding the Literature: A Review of Robotic Cloth Manipulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.01361 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01361/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 1 Jul 2024.

## Built on by (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [ManipBench: Benchmarking Vision-Language Models for Low-Level Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09698/) (2025)
- [Diffusion Dynamics Models with Generative State Estimation for Cloth Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11999/) (2025)
- [Cloth-Splatting: 3D Cloth State Estimation from RGB Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01715/) (2025)
- [Real-Time Operator Takeover for Visuomotor Diffusion Policy Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02308/) (2025)
- [InstructionBench: An Instructional Video Understanding Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.05040/) (2025)
- [Preference Aligned Visuomotor Diffusion Policies for Deformable Object Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09583/) (2026)
- [SKT: Integrating State-Aware Keypoint Trajectories with Vision-Language Models for Robotic Garment Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18082/) (2024)
- [FoldNet: Learning Generalizable Closed-Loop Policy for Garment Folding via Keypoint-Driven Asset and Demonstration Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09109/) (2025)
- [CLASP: General-Purpose Clothes Manipulation with Semantic Keypoints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19983/) (2025)
- [MLLM-Fabric: Multimodal Large Language Model-Driven Robotic Framework for Fabric Sorting and Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04351/) (2025)
- [Dynamic robotic cloth folding with efficient Koopman operator-based model predictive control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18373/) (2026)
- [Instrumentation for Imitation Learning: Enhancing Training Datasets for Clothes Hanger Insertion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.23847/) (2026)
- [Dressing in Motion: A Human Motion-Aware Diffusion Policy for Robot-Assisted Dressing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.04759/) (2026)
- [Vision-Based 6-DoF Grasp Pose Estimation for Robot Cloth Unfolding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31452/) (2026)
- [ClothCode: Generative Modeling for Garment State Estimation and Dynamics Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14200/) (2026)
- [Continuous-Time Cloth Dynamics with Physics-Informed Neural ODEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14342/) (2026)
- [ClothAtlas: Joint Garment Identification and State Estimation under Self-Occlusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.16293/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The realm of textiles spans clothing, households, healthcare, sports, and industrial applications. The deformable nature of these objects poses unique challenges that prior work on rigid objects cannot fully address. The increasing interest within the community in textile perception and manipulation has led to new methods that aim to address challenges in modeling, perception, and control, resulting in significant progress. However, this progress is often tailored to one specific textile or a subcategory of these textiles. To understand what restricts these methods and hinders current approaches from generalizing to a broader range of real-world textiles, this review provides an overview of the field, focusing specifically on how and to what extent textile variations are addressed in modeling, perception, benchmarking, and manipulation of textiles. We finally conclude by identifying key open problems and outlining grand challenges that will drive future advancements in the field.