6th Workshop on Deformable Objects Manipulation: Research Foundations, Reproducibility and Real-World Challenges @ ICRA2026

Deformable object manipulation, spanning garments, soft foods, flexible packaging, cables, ropes, and tissues, has rapidly become a cornerstone testbed for embodied intelligence. Despite impressive demonstrations and steady academic advances, the field still lacks clear, comparable evidence of the progress and real-world capabilities due to gaps in reproducibility and benchmarking. This workshop renews the RMDO@ICRA series with the intent of uniting academic contributions with a renewed focus on system-level challenges. The research track welcomes contributions addressing cutting-edge research topics such as state representation, simulation and modeling, perception, and large-scale data-driven approaches, including recent advances in vision-language-action (VLA) models. The system-level track comprises (i) synergies with a Garment Manipulation Challenge that includes simulation and real-world tasks, and (ii) organizer-led reproductions of influential methods for real-world tasks such as folding and flattening, conducted in collaboration with original authors to surface design choices and practical constraints. Our goal is not to re-rank methods, but to identify how hard it is to reproduce different methods, what the challenges are in doing so and how well these methods perform under diverse conditions, using transparent metrics for success, generalization, sample efficiency, robustness, and versatility. By integrating principled research with comparative, open evaluation across deformable classes, the workshop will provide a calibrated view of current capabilities and limitations, and highlight the methodological and system-level gaps for solving real-world tasks in deformable object manipulation.

The workshop will be held in hybrid mode

Links:

Content

Topics

Over the past five years, the RMDO@ICRA workshop series has established itself as the central venue for discussing progress, challenges, and opportunities in the very active field of deformable object manipulation. Building on this foundation and acknowledging the advances in deformable object manipulation, this workshop introduces a renewed perspective that extends the scope of the workshop to explicitly include system-level challenges for real-world deformable manipulation, including evaluation and reproducibility. To foster interaction about these system-level challenges, we will complement contributed research efforts on deformable object manipulation with two distinctive components

  • (i) a Garment Manipulation Challenge spanning simulation and real-world tasks,
  • (ii) organizer-led reproductions of influential methods for folding and flattening, conducted in collaboration with original authors.
At the same time, the workshop will remain a forum for cutting-edge academic research across the spectrum of deformable manipulation, including garments, flexible packaging, soft foods, and tissues. The workshop reflects the state of the art by engaging with emerging research frontiers, including the integration of vision–language–action (VLA) and foundation models, reinforcement and imitation learning, dexterous and bimanual control, and scalable 3D simulation. The academic focus will span the breadth of deformable object manipulation, including:
  • Representation and state estimation
  • Simulation and modeling
  • Transfer from simulation to reality
  • Learning to manipulate using data-driven methods such as reinforcement learning and learning from demonstrations
  • Perception: state tracking, parameter identification, property detection (e.g. landmarks for garments) and classification, etc.
  • Control, visual servoing and planning
  • Use of foundation models, such as large vision and language models, and associated large datasets
  • Specialized tools, e.g. grippers, and sensors

    • Workshop format

    The workshop will include:

    • Invited talks by selected speakers, each consisting of about 20 minutes of presentation and 5 minutes for Q&A;<\li>
    • Follow-up Reproducibility Discussions, consisting of a 15-minute dialogue between the invited speaker and the co-organizer who reproduced their paper. This session will highlight practical challenges, clarifications provided by the original authors, and broader lessons for reproducibility in robotics research.
    • Accepted extended abstracts (3 pages with unlimited references and appendix) presented in poster sessions and selected spotlight talks. In case of a hybrid or virtual workshop, we will ask for pre-recorded spotlight talks for a smoother execution in case of connection issues. However, for each selected contribution, at least one author will be required to be present during the workshop for a live Q&A session;
    • Competition Spotlights, where winners of the simulation and real-world tracks of the Garment Manipulation Challenge will present “lessons learned,” focusing on design choices, challenges, and successes in perception, modeling, and control.
    • A panel discussion at the end of the workshop, moderated by the organizers, for discussing challenges and promising directions for deformable object manipulation with experts of the field.

Garment Manipulation Challenge

TBD

Schedule

TBD

Call for Papers

We invite participants to submit extended abstracts of 3 pages, with unlimited pages for references and appendices, in the IEEE conference style. Submissions will be reviewed by experts in their respective fields. The accepted abstracts will be made available on the workshop website but will not appear in the official IEEE conference proceedings. Participants are encouraged to submit their recent work on the topics of interest mentioned above.

Contributions are encouraged, but are not required, to be original. The review process will be single-blind, meaning the submitted paper does not need to be anonymized.

Accepted extended abstracts will be presented in poster sessions and selected spotlight talks. We will request pre-recorded spotlight talks to ensure a smoother execution of the workshop. However, for each selected contribution, at least one author will be required to be present during the workshop for a live Q&A session.

Abstracts can be submitted through Microsoft CMT: WDOICRA2025.

Important Dates: (dd/mm/yyyy)

  • Submission Deadline: TBD
  • Notification Date: TBD
  • Final Submission: TBD
  • Workshop Date: TBD

Invited Speakers (alphabetical order):

TBA

Organizers

  • Alberta Longhini, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
  • Ruihai Wu, Peking University and Berkeley, China
  • Yuran Wang, Peking University, China
  • Marco Moletta, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
  • Tara Sadjadpour, Berkeley, USA
  • Martina Lippi, Roma Tre University, Italy
  • Júlia Borràs Sol, Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (CSIC-UPC), Spain
  • Andrej Gams, Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia
  • Danica Kragic, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
  • Thomas Lips, Ghent University, Belgium
  • Francis Wyffels, Ghent University, Belgium

Contact

If you have any questions please contact Alberta Longhini at the email: albertal AT kth DOT se