Press Release

GET DRESSED!
NOVEL MACHINE LEARNING TECHNIQUE FOR SIMULATINGTHE EVERYDAY TASK OF DRESSINGTOKYO, Japan, 20 November 2018 – Putting on clothes is a daily, mundane task that most of us
perform with little or no thought. We may never take into consideration the multiple steps andphysical motions involved when we’re getting dressed in the mornings. But that is precisely whatneeds to be explored when attempting to capture the motion of dressing and simulating clothfor computer animation.
Computer scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Google Brain, Google’s artificial
intelligence research arm, have devised a novel computational method, driven by machinelearning techniques, to successfully and realistically simulate the multi-step process of putting
on clothes. When dissected, the task of dressing is quite complex, and involves several different
physical interactions between the character and his or her clothing, primarily guided by theperson’s sense of touch.
Creating animation of a character putting
on clothing is challenging due to thecomplex

interactions

betweenthecharacter and the simulated garment.
Mostworkinhighlyconstrained

character animation deals with static
environments which don't react verymuch to the motion of the character,notes the researchers. In contrast, clothing can respond immediately and drastically to smallchanges in the position of the body; clothing has the tendency to fold, stick and cling to the body,making haptic, or touch sensation, essential to the task.
Another unique challenge about dressing is that it requires the character to perform a prolonged
sequence of motion involving a diverse set of subtasks, such as grasping the front layer of ashirt, tucking a hand into the shirt opening and pushing a hand through a sleeve.
“Dressing seems easy to many of us because we practice it every single day. In reality, thePage 1 of 4

dynamics of cloth make it very challenging to learn how to dress from scratch,” says Alexander
Clegg, lead author of the research and a computer science PhD student at the Georgia Instituteof Technology. “We leverage simulation to teach a neural network to accomplish these complex
tasks by breaking the task down into smaller pieces with well-defined goals, allowing thecharacter to try the task thousands of times and providing reward or penalty signals when thecharacter tries beneficial or detrimental changes to its policy.”
The researchers’ method then updates the neural network one step at a time to make thediscovered positive changes more likely to occur in the future. “In this way, we teach thecharacter how to succeed at the task,” notes Clegg.
Clegg and his collaborators at Georgia Tech include computer scientists Wenhao Yu, Greg Turkand Karen Liu. Together with Google Brain researcher Jie Tan, the group will present their work
at SIGGRAPH Asia 2018 in Tokyo 4 December to 7 December. The annual conference features
the most respected technical and creative members in the field of computer graphics andinteractive techniques, and showcases leading edge research in science, art, gaming andanimation, among other sectors.
In this study, the researchers demonstrated their approach on several dressing tasks: putting
on a t-shirt, throwing on a jacket and robot-assisted dressing of a sleeve. With the trained neuralnetwork, they were able to achieve complex reenactment of a variety of ways an animatedcharacter puts on clothes. Key is incorporating the sense of touch into their framework toovercome the challenges in cloth simulation. The researchers found that careful selection of thecloth observations and the reward functions in their trained network are crucial to theframework’s success. As a result, this novel approach not only enables single dressing sequences
but a character controller that can successfully dress under various conditions.
“We've opened the door to a new way of animating multi-step interaction tasks in complex
environments using reinforcement learning,” says Clegg. “There is still plenty of work to be done
continuing down this path, allowing simulation to provide experience and practice for task
training in a virtual world.” In expanding this work, the team is currently collaborating with otherresearchers in Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics lab to investigate the application of robotics
for dressing assistance.
For the team’s paper and video, visit their project page.
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More details on this Technical Papers Session at SIGGRAPH Asia 2018:
Session: Character Animation
Date: 6 December 2018, Thursday
Time: 4:15pm – 6:00pm
Venue: Hall D5, 5F, D BlockTo register for SIGGRAPH Asia, and for more details of the event, visit http://sa2018.siggraph.org.
– end –Notes to editors:•For more information on the Technical Papers Program, click here.

•For media accreditation to SIGGRAPH Asia 2018, please register here.

About SIGGRAPH Asia 2018
The 11th ACM SIGGRAPH Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Asia
(SIGGRAPH Asia 2018) will be held in Tokyo, Japan at the Tokyo International Forum from 4 to 7 December
2018. The annual event held in Asia attracts the most respected technical and creative people from all overthe world who are excited by research, science, art, animation, gaming, interactivity, education and emerging
technologies.
The four-day conference will include a diverse range of juried programs, such as the Art Gallery, Computer
Animation Festival, Courses, Emerging Technologies, Posters, Technical Briefs, Technical Papers and Virtual &Augmented Reality. A three-day exhibition held from 5 to 7 December 2018 will offer a business platform forindustry players to market their innovative products and services to the computer graphics and interactive
techniques professionals and enthusiasts from Asia and beyond. For more information, please visit
http://sa2018.siggraph.org. Find us on: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube with the official event
hashtag, #SIGGRAPHAsia.
About ACM SIGGRAPH
The ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques is an interdisciplinary
community interested in research, technology, and applications in computer graphics and interactivetechniques. Members include researchers, developers, and users from the technical, academic, business, andart communities. ACM SIGGRAPH enriches the computer graphics and interactive techniques community
year-round through its conferences, global network of professional and student chapters, publications, andeducational activities. For more information, please visit www.siggraph.org.
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About Koelnmesse
Koelnmesse Pte Ltd is one of the world's largest trade fair companies. Its more than 80 trade fairs andexhibitions have the broadest international scope in the industry, as 60 percent of the exhibitors and 40
percent of the visitors come from outside Germany. The Koelnmesse events include leading global trade fairs
for 25 sectors, such as Imm Cologne, Anuga, IDS, INTERMOT, Interzum Cologne, Photokina, Gamescom, andthe International Hardware Fair Cologne. Koelnmesse is ACM SIGGRAPH’s event organizer for the last 10
editions of SIGGRAPH Asia. For more information, please visit www.koelnmesse.com.sg.
Media Contacts
Hitoshi Kasai
Head of Communications, SIGGRAPH Asia 2018
MIACIS Associates
hitoshi.kasai@siggraph.org
Jamie Huang
Marketing & Media Partnerships, SIGGRAPH Asia 2018
Koelnmesse Pte Ltd
jamie.huang@siggraph.org

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