Standardization of Cloth Objects and its Relevance in Robotic Manipulation

This repository contains the code for Standardization of Cloth Objects and its Relevance in Robotic Manipulation, with the corresponding paper accepted at the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2024) in Yokohama.

Contact: Irene Garcia-Camacho (igarcia@iri.upc.edu)

Getting Started

The respository includes the necessary packages to measure the stiffness of the cloth objects based on the drape test [1], adapted for robotic applications, and independently of the camera brand or setup. The package has the following structure:

• **/data** includes the database with the photos of the draped clothes, the resulting images and the stiffness results in a CSV file.
• **/src** contains the necessary scripts to compute the stiffness.
  • px_to_cm.py Script to obtain the pixel to centimeter ratio for obtaining a common unit for all camera brands and setups.
  • stiffness.py Script to measure the stiffness value of the garment.
  • trackbars.py Script to obtain segmentation thresholds.

Execution

1. Follow the steps to setup the camera, aruco pattern and cloth objects and take zenithal color images.
2. Save the images in a folder in the root folder with name "data".
3. Use the image with the aruco pattern to compute the pixel to centimeter ratio:

python px_to_cm.py

4. Compute the stiffness of the cloth object through their zenithal images. You will need to introduce the input file name (-i), plate diamter used (-p) and cloth dimensions (-s)

python stiffness.py -i <file_name> -p <plate_diam> -s <short_edge_length> <long_edge_length>

If necessary, use the trackbars.py script to obtain a better segmentation by sliding the threshold trackbars until the contour of the drapped cloth is correctly detected.

5. Repeat step 4 for each garment. The resulting stiffness values will be saved on the stiffness_data.csv file.

Usage example

Example for measuring the stiffness of the flat towel with dimensions 50x90cm, using a plate of 27cm diameter:

python stiffness.py -i sm_towel -p 28 -s 30 50

Dependencies

• Python
• OpenCV
• CSV

References

[1] C.G.E., "The measurement of fabric drape", Journal of the Textile Institute, vol. 59, pp. 253-260, 1968.