FoldNet: Learning Generalizable Closed-Loop Policy for Garment Folding via Keypoint-Driven Asset and Demonstration Synthesis

Due to the deformability of garments, generating a large amount of high-quality data for robotic garment manipulation tasks is highly challenging. In this paper, we present a synthetic garment dataset that can be used for robotic garment folding. We begin by constructing geometric garment templates based on keypoints and applying generative models to generate realistic texture patterns. Leveraging these keypoint annotations, we generate folding demonstrations in simulation and train folding policies via closed-loop imitation learning. To improve robustness, we propose KG-DAgger, which uses a keypoint-based strategy to generate demonstration data for recovering from failures. KG-DAgger significantly improves the model performance, boosting the real-world success rate by 25\%. After training with 15K trajectories (about 2M image-action pairs), the model achieves a 75\% success rate in the real world. Experiments in both simulation and real-world settings validate the effectiveness of our proposed framework.

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Publication Details

Journal
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
Published
2026-01-21
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/lra.2026.3656770
Primary Topic
Manufacturing Process and Optimization
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

FoldNet: Learning Generalizable Closed-Loop Policy for Garment Folding via Keypoint-Driven Asset and Demonstration Synthesis

Bo-Wen Xiao, Y J Chen, Wang He
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
Manufacturing Process and Optimization
article

FoldNet: Learning Generalizable Closed-Loop Policy for Garment Folding via Keypoint-Driven Asset and Demonstration Synthesis

Bo-Wen Xiao, Y J Chen, Wang He
article en

Abstract

Due to the deformability of garments, generating a large amount of high-quality data for robotic garment manipulation tasks is highly challenging. In this paper, we present a synthetic garment dataset that can be used for robotic garment folding. We begin by constructing geometric garment templates based on keypoints and applying generative models to generate realistic texture patterns. Leveraging these keypoint annotations, we generate folding demonstrations in simulation and train folding policies via closed-loop imitation learning. To improve robustness, we propose KG-DAgger, which uses a keypoint-based strategy to generate demonstration data for recovering from failures. KG-DAgger significantly improves the model performance, boosting the real-world success rate by 25\%. After training with 15K trajectories (about 2M image-action pairs), the model achieves a 75\% success rate in the real world. Experiments in both simulation and real-world settings validate the effectiveness of our proposed framework.

IEEE Robotics and Automation LettersVol. 11(3)
Peking University (CN)
Openalex Percentile: Top 100%
Manufacturing Process and Optimization
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