DiffClothAI: Differentiable Cloth Simulation with Intersection-free Frictional Contact and Differentiable Two-Way Coupling with Articulated Rigid Bodies

Xinyuan Yu, Siheng Zhao, Siyuan Luo, Gang Yang, Lin Shao

Abstract: Differentiable Simulations have recently proven useful for various robotic manipulation tasks, including cloth manipulation. In robotic cloth simulation, it is crucial to maintain intersection-free properties. We present DiffClothAI, a differentiable cloth simulation with intersection-free friction contact and two-way coupling with articulated rigid bodies. DiffClothAI integrates the Project Dynamics and Incremental Potential Contact coherently and proposes an effective method to derive gradients in the Cloth Simulation. It also establishes the differentiable coupling mechanism between articulated rigid bodies and cloth. We conduct a comprehensive evaluation of DiffClothAI's effectiveness and accuracy and perform a variety of experiments in downstream robotic manipulation tasks. Supplemental materials and videos are available on our project webpage at https://sites.google.com/view/diffsimcloth.