A curated list of resources on simulating deformable objects (cloth, rope, soft bodies) for embodied intelligence — simulation environments, manipulation tasks, sim-to-real transfer, and asset generation.
- Simulation Environments & Platforms
- Deformable Object Manipulation Tasks
- Sim-to-Real Transfer
- Benchmarks & Evaluation
- 3D Asset Generation for Simulation
- Foundational Simulation Techniques
- SAPIEN: A SimulAted Part-based Interactive ENvironment - Interactive simulation environment based on PhysX, excelling at articulated and deformable object simulation. Widely used in Embodied AI research. 📄 🔧 ⭐
- Genesis World - Multi-physics simulation platform covering rigid, deformable, and fluid bodies. 29k+ GitHub stars. 🔧 ⭐
- SAPIEN ManiSkill - Unified framework for manipulation skill learning built on SAPIEN, with rich deformable object tasks. 🔧 📊 ⭐
- Isaac Sim / Isaac Lab - NVIDIA's robotics simulation platform with GPU-accelerated deformable body support for large-scale Embodied AI training. 🔧 ⭐
- MuJoCo - Advanced physics engine with deformable body simulation support (since v3.x), widely adopted in robotics research. 🔧 ⭐
- Taichi - High-performance parallel computing language, popular for differentiable soft body simulation in Embodied AI research. 🔧
- GarmentLab: A Unified Simulation and Benchmark for Garment Manipulation - Unified simulation and benchmark for garment manipulation tasks — folding, hanging, dressing. 📄 📊 ⭐
- ClothesNet: An Information-Rich 3D Garment Model Repository with Simulated Clothes Environment - Large-scale 3D garment dataset with rich annotations for manipulation research. 📄 📊
- RAPID: Rapid Adaptation of Particle Dynamics for Generalized Deformable Object Mobile Manipulation - Rapid adaptation of particle dynamics for generalized deformable object mobile manipulation. 📄 ⭐
- Benchmarking the Sim-to-Real Gap in Cloth Manipulation - Systematic evaluation of the sim-to-real gap in cloth manipulation across different simulators. 📄 📊
- Learning to Manipulate Deformable Objects in the Real World via Sim2Real - End-to-end sim2real pipeline for deformable object manipulation with domain randomization. 📄
- SoftGym: Benchmarking Deep Reinforcement Learning for Deformable Object Manipulation - Benchmark suite for deformable object manipulation (cloth, rope, fluid) with standardized RL environments. 📄 📊 ⭐
- PhysX-3D: Physical-Grounded 3D Asset Generation - End-to-end paradigm for physical-grounded 3D asset generation with PhysXNet dataset. 📄 ⭐
- PhysX-Anything: Simulation-Ready Physical 3D Assets from Single Image - Generate simulation-ready 3D assets with physical properties from a single image. 📄
- PhysX-Omni: Unified Simulation-Ready Physical 3D Generation for Rigid, Deformable, and Articulated Objects - First to include deformable objects in PhysX generation scope, unifying rigid/deformable/articulated. 📄 ⭐
- DiffGI: Differentiable Geometry Images - 3D garment generation via differentiable geometry images (no integrated physics yet). 📄
- XRTailor (OpenXRLab) - GPU-accelerated cloth simulation engine for large-scale data generation. 🔧
- Position Based Dynamics (PBD) - Classic introductory resource for Position Based Dynamics simulation. 🔧
- ThinShellLab: Thin-Shell Object Manipulations With Differentiable Physics Simulations - Fully differentiable simulation platform for thin-shell materials (paper, cloth) with varying bending stiffness. 📄 🔧
- Second-Order FEM for Deformable Surfaces - High-order finite element method for improving accuracy in cloth / thin-shell simulation. 📄
| Tag | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 📄 | Paper |
| 🔧 | Tool / Framework / Engine |
| 📊 | Benchmark / Dataset |
| ⭐ | Recommended / Important |
Contributions welcome! Please read the contribution guidelines first.
Quick way to add a paper:
- Edit
papers.yml— add your entry under the appropriate section - Run
python generate.py - Submit a Pull Request
