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Main Authors: Blanco-Mulero, David, Borràs, Júlia, Torras, Carme
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.18436
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author Blanco-Mulero, David
Borràs, Júlia
Torras, Carme
author_facet Blanco-Mulero, David
Borràs, Júlia
Torras, Carme
contents Robotic-assisted dressing has the potential to significantly aid both patients as well as healthcare personnel, reducing the workload and improving the efficiency in clinical settings. While substantial progress has been made in robotic dressing assistance, prior works typically assume that garments are already unfolded and ready for use. However, in medical applications gowns and aprons are often stored in a folded configuration, requiring an additional unfolding step. In this paper, we introduce the pre-dressing step, the process of unfolding garments prior to assisted dressing. We leverage imitation learning for learning three manipulation primitives, including both high and low acceleration motions. In addition, we employ a visual classifier to categorise the garment state as closed, partly opened, and fully opened. We conduct an empirical evaluation of the learned manipulation primitives as well as their combinations. Our results show that highly dynamic motions are not effective for unfolding freshly unpacked garments, where the combination of motions can efficiently enhance the opening configuration.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_18436
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evaluating the Pre-Dressing Step: Unfolding Medical Garments Via Imitation Learning
Blanco-Mulero, David
Borràs, Júlia
Torras, Carme
Robotics
Robotic-assisted dressing has the potential to significantly aid both patients as well as healthcare personnel, reducing the workload and improving the efficiency in clinical settings. While substantial progress has been made in robotic dressing assistance, prior works typically assume that garments are already unfolded and ready for use. However, in medical applications gowns and aprons are often stored in a folded configuration, requiring an additional unfolding step. In this paper, we introduce the pre-dressing step, the process of unfolding garments prior to assisted dressing. We leverage imitation learning for learning three manipulation primitives, including both high and low acceleration motions. In addition, we employ a visual classifier to categorise the garment state as closed, partly opened, and fully opened. We conduct an empirical evaluation of the learned manipulation primitives as well as their combinations. Our results show that highly dynamic motions are not effective for unfolding freshly unpacked garments, where the combination of motions can efficiently enhance the opening configuration.
title Evaluating the Pre-Dressing Step: Unfolding Medical Garments Via Imitation Learning
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.18436