Autonomous fabric manipulation is a challenging task due to complex dynamics and potential self-occlusion during fabric handling. An intuitive method of fabric folding manipulation first involves obtaining a smooth and unfolded fabric configuration before the folding process begins. However, the combination of quasi-static actions such as pick & place and dynamic action like fling proves inadequate in effectively unfolding long-sleeved T-shirts with sleeves mostly tucked inside the garment. To address this limitation, this paper introduces an improved quasi-static action called pick & drag, specifically designed to handle this type of fabric configuration. Additionally, an efficient dual-arm manipulation system is designed in this paper, which combines quasi-static (including pick & place and pick & drag) and dynamic fling actions to flexibly manipulate fabrics into unfolded and smooth configurations. Subsequently, keypoints of the fabric are detected, enabling autonomous folding. To address the scarcity of publicly available keypoint detection datasets for real fabric, we gathered images of various fabric configurations and types in real scenes to create a comprehensive keypoint dataset for fabric folding. This dataset aims to enhance the success rate of keypoint detection. Moreover, we evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed system in real-world settings, where it consistently and reliably unfolds and folds various types of fabrics, including challenging situations such as long-sleeved T-shirts with most parts of sleeves tucked inside the garment. Specifically, our method achieves a coverage rate of 0.822 and a success rate of 0.88 for long-sleeved T-shirts folding.

翻译：自主布料操控是一项具有挑战性的任务，原因在于布料处理过程中复杂的动力学特性以及潜在的自遮挡问题。一种直观的布料折叠操作方法要求在执行折叠动作之前，先将布料平滑展开。然而，结合准静态操作（如拾取与放置）和动态操作（如抛掷）的方法，在有效展开大部分袖子隐藏在衣物内部的长袖T恤时效果不佳。为解决此限制，本文引入了一种改进的准静态操作——拾取与拖拽，专门用于处理此类布料构型。此外，本文设计了一种高效的双臂操控系统，结合准静态操作（包括拾取与放置及拾取与拖拽）和动态抛掷动作，灵活地将布料操控至展开且平滑的构型。随后，检测布料的关键点以实现自主折叠。针对真实布料关键点检测公开数据集稀缺的问题，我们在真实场景中收集了不同构型和类型的布料图像，构建了一个用于布料折叠的全面关键点数据集。该数据集旨在提升关键点检测的成功率。此外，我们在真实环境中评估了所提系统的有效性，该系统能够一致且可靠地展开和折叠各种类型的布料，包括大部分袖子隐藏在衣物内部的长袖T恤等具有挑战性的情况。具体而言，在长袖T恤折叠任务中，我们的方法实现了0.822的覆盖率以及0.88的成功率。