Isaac Sim 4.5 has major issues with collisions between "particle cloth" and the "Franka" robot

Omniverse Isaac Sim
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Isaac Sim Version

4.5.0

Operating System

Ubuntu 22.04

Hello everyone, I apologize for bothering you, but I’ve encountered some issues while using Isaac Sim and would like to seek some help.

Regarding some problems with “physics simulation”, I never seem to receive any assistance or answers. I’m not sure if anyone actually sees my requests for help.

I’m using Isaac Sim 4.5 for cloth simulation, attempting to grasp “particle cloth” with the Franka gripper, but I’ve encountered numerous problems.

First, when I normally close the Franka gripper to grasp the cloth, it’s not precise. The gripper penetrates through the entire garment. While this is problematic, it can still manage to grab and lift the clothing.

However, I then encountered a much more serious issue. When moving the grasped clothing, after traveling a certain distance, the clothing gradually slips out of the robotic gripper and falls. I’ve tried adjusting many parameters including friction (I also tested grasping a “cube” with the robotic arm, which remained very stable during movement). I attempted both code-controlled movement and using “shift+left-click” to simulate force moving the robotic arm, but nothing worked. It appears the rigid body collision and “particle cloth” don’t simulate well together. I want to know how I can reliably grasp the cloth so it doesn’t slip during movement.

How exactly is the collision friction between particles and rigid bodies calculated? It seems they’re not properly synchronized - even when I set very high friction values, their frictional interactions don’t seem to affect each other.

This appears to be an engine computation issue, possibly incorrect collision calculations or insufficient precision, but I have no way to adjust these fundamental parameters.

This problem is extremely frustrating - I desperately need some professional advice and solution

20250514-174655
scene.zip (24.2 MB)

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Hi @Julie_A, thank you for posting your question and sorry to hear that you’ve had limited help with previous physics issues. Can you clarify what friction parameters have you tried? Are they the friction on the clothing or on the robot gripper pads? Both need to be adjusted.
One thing to try is the same as the suggestion I left on here to change the collider mesh Approximation on the fingers. You can try Convex hull or Bounding box. Also, try to make the robot joint Drive gains smaller. Finally, try to increase the physics simulation frequency.

I will also see if I can find an expert on this contact interaction between rigid body and deformable.

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