mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Multi-Stage Cable Routing through Hierarchical Imitation Learning

arXiv 2307.08927 ↗First posted 18 Jul 2023cs.RO cs.AIcited by 60

On the map: Offline RL and imitation learning from data → Robot manipulation imitation learning

Abstract (arXiv)

We study the problem of learning to perform multi-stage robotic manipulation tasks, with applications to cable routing, where the robot must route a cable through a series of clips. This setting presents challenges representative of complex multi-stage robotic manipulation scenarios: handling deformable objects, closing the loop on visual perception, and handling extended behaviors consisting of multiple steps that must be executed successfully to complete the entire task. In such settings, learning individual primitives for each stage that succeed with a high enough rate to perform a complete temporally extended task is impractical: if each stage must be completed successfully and has a non-negligible probability of failure, the likelihood of successful completion of the entire task becomes negligible. Therefore, successful controllers for such multi-stage tasks must be able to recover from failure and compensate for imperfections in low-level controllers by smartly choosing which controllers to trigger at any given time, retrying, or taking corrective action as needed. To this end, we describe an imitation learning system that uses vision-based policies trained from demonstrations at both the lower (motor control) and the upper (sequencing) level, present a system for instantiating this method to learn the cable routing task, and perform evaluations showing great performance in generalizing to very challenging clip placement variations. Supplementary videos, datasets, and code can be found at https://sites.google.com/view/cablerouting.

Key facts. Cited by 60 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Robot manipulation imitation learning, one of 13 directions in Offline RL and imitation learning from data. Builds on 63 of its 104 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 18 Jul 2023.

Builds on

63 of 104 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardware23 Apr
  2. 2022Behavior Transformers: Cloning k modes with one stone22 Jun
  3. 2020Deep Imitation Learning for Bimanual Robotic Manipulation11 Oct
  4. 2019Relay Policy Learning: Solving Long-Horizon Tasks via Imitation and Reinforcement Learning25 Oct

Other references · 59

  1. 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 52,096
  2. 2014Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimizationcited by 37,240
  3. 2015Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shiftcited by 7,005
  4. 2013Distributed Representations of Words and Phrases and their Compositionalitycited by 3,474
  5. 2022Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordancescited by 2,348
  6. 2019RandAugment: Practical automated data augmentation with a reduced search spacecited by 2,269
  7. 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,061
  8. 2018Group Normalizationcited by 1,524
  9. 2015End-to-End Training of Deep Visuomotor Policiescited by 875
  10. 2018QT-Opt: Scalable Deep Reinforcement Learning for Vision-Based Robotic Manipulationcited by 743
  11. 2020Learning Quadrupedal Locomotion over Challenging Terraincited by 604
  12. 2022Perceiver-Actor: A Multi-Task Transformer for Robotic Manipulationcited by 551
38 more
  1. 2016The Option-Critic Architecturecited by 448
  2. 2022VIMA: General Robot Manipulation with Multimodal Promptscited by 407
  3. 2016Target-driven Visual Navigation in Indoor Scenes using Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 366
  4. 2016Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Manipulation with Asynchronous Off-Policy Updatescited by 353
  5. 2016Learning Hand-Eye Coordination for Robotic Grasping with Deep Learning and Large-Scale Data Collectioncited by 316
  6. 2020Integrated Task and Motion Planningcited by 290
  7. 2018HG-DAgger: Interactive Imitation Learning with Human Expertscited by 266
  8. 2017Dex-Net 2.0: Deep Learning to Plan Robust Grasps with Synthetic Point Clouds and Analytic Grasp Metricscited by 264
  9. 2021MT-Opt: Continuous Multi-Task Robotic Reinforcement Learning at Scalecited by 229
  10. 2023ViNT: A Foundation Model for Visual Navigationcited by 222
  11. 2015Supersizing Self-supervision: Learning to Grasp from 50K Tries and 700 Robot Hourscited by 209
  12. 2022GNM: A General Navigation Model to Drive Any Robotcited by 171
  13. 2022Legged Locomotion in Challenging Terrains using Egocentric Visioncited by 151
  14. 2018PDDLStream: Integrating Symbolic Planners and Blackbox Samplers via Optimistic Adaptive Planningcited by 150
  15. 2017Behavior Trees in Robotics and AI: An Introductioncited by 107
  16. 2017Meta Learning Shared Hierarchiescited by 93
  17. 2017Combining Self-Supervised Learning and Imitation for Vision-Based Rope Manipulationcited by 90
  18. 2018Hierarchical Imitation and Reinforcement Learningcited by 88
  19. 2020Causal Discovery in Physical Systems from Videoscited by 77
  20. 2022See, Hear, and Feel: Smart Sensory Fusion for Robotic Manipulationcited by 68
  21. 2021FabricFlowNet: Bimanual Cloth Manipulation with a Flow-based Policycited by 54
  22. 2022Vision-Based Manipulators Need to Also See from Their Handscited by 47
  23. 2019Cable Manipulation with a Tactile-Reactive Grippercited by 46
  24. 2019Self-Supervised Learning of State Estimation for Manipulating Deformable Linear Objectscited by 45
  25. 2017DDCO: Discovery of Deep Continuous Options for Robot Learning from Demonstrationscited by 43
  26. 2021Long-Horizon Manipulation of Unknown Objects via Task and Motion Planning with Estimated Affordancescited by 40
  27. 2019Reinforcement Learning on Variable Impedance Controller for High-Precision Robotic Assemblycited by 39
  28. 2021Offline Meta-Reinforcement Learning for Industrial Insertioncited by 39
  29. 2022Iterative Residual Policy: for Goal-Conditioned Dynamic Manipulation of Deformable Objectscited by 37
  30. 2020Data-efficient Hindsight Off-policy Option Learningcited by 31
  31. 2019Mechanical Search: Multi-Step Retrieval of a Target Object Occluded by Cluttercited by 30
  32. 2021Robust Multi-Modal Policies for Industrial Assembly via Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrations: A Large-Scale Studycited by 30
  33. 2021Grounding Predicates through Actionscited by 25
  34. 2022Learning Visual Locomotion with Cross-Modal Supervisioncited by 25
  35. 2020Robots of the Lost Arc: Self-Supervised Learning to Dynamically Manipulate Fixed-Endpoint Cablescited by 21
  36. 2020Untangling Dense Knots by Learning Task-Relevant Keypointscited by 21
  37. 2022Generalizable Task Planning through Representation Pretrainingcited by 19
  38. 2022DextAIRity: Deformable Manipulation Can be a Breezecited by 18

50 most cited of 59 All 59 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 4; 2024: 20; 2025: 20; 2026: 16.

60 papers.

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  1. 2024OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 2,887
  2. 2024Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policycited by 1,484
  3. 2024RDT-1B: a Diffusion Foundation Model for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 691
  4. 2025SpatialVLA: Exploring Spatial Representations for Visual-Language-Action Modelcited by 519
  5. 2024CogACT: A Foundational Vision-Language-Action Model for Synergizing Cognition and Action in Robotic Manipulationcited by 422
  6. 2025UniVLA: Learning to Act Anywhere with Task-centric Latent Actionscited by 410
  7. 2025HybridVLA: Collaborative Diffusion and Autoregression in a Unified Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 181
  8. 2024Yell At Your Robot: Improving On-the-Fly from Language Correctionscited by 124
  9. 2024Scaling Cross-Embodied Learning: One Policy for Manipulation, Navigation, Locomotion and Aviationcited by 114
  10. 2023Toward General-Purpose Robots via Foundation Models: A Survey and Meta-Analysiscited by 103
  11. 2024IGOR: Image-GOal Representations are the Atomic Control Units for Foundation Models in Embodied AIcited by 72
  12. 2024Moto: Latent Motion Token as the Bridging Language for Learning Robot Manipulation from Videoscited by 69
38 more
  1. 2023LOTUS: Continual Imitation Learning for Robot Manipulation Through Unsupervised Skill Discoverycited by 67
  2. 2026Robometer: Scaling General-Purpose Robotic Reward Models via Trajectory Comparisonscited by 60
  3. 2023QUAR-VLA: Vision-Language-Action Model for Quadruped Robotscited by 56
  4. 2026World Action Models: The Next Frontier in Embodied AIcited by 50
  5. 2024Re-Mix: Optimizing Data Mixtures for Large Scale Imitation Learningcited by 47
  6. 2024VidMan: Exploiting Implicit Dynamics from Video Diffusion Model for Effective Robot Manipulationcited by 46
  7. 2025Reflective Planning: Vision-Language Models for Multi-Stage Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulationcited by 42
  8. 2025Fast-in-Slow: A Dual-System Foundation Model Unifying Fast Manipulation within Slow Reasoningcited by 31
  9. 2024InterACT: Inter-dependency Aware Action Chunking with Hierarchical Attention Transformers for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 22
  10. 2024RoboMatrix: A Skill-centric Hierarchical Framework for Scalable Robot Task Planning and Execution in Open-Worldcited by 22
  11. 2024Play to the Score: Stage-Guided Dynamic Multi-Sensory Fusion for Robotic Manipulationcited by 20
  12. 2025Learning Compositional Behaviors from Demonstration and Languagecited by 15
  13. 2025XR-1: Towards Versatile Vision-Language-Action Models via Learning Unified Vision-Motion Representationscited by 15
  14. 2025ManualVLA: A Unified VLA Model for Chain-of-Thought Manual Generation and Robotic Manipulationcited by 14
  15. 2026TaF-VLA: Tactile-Force Alignment in Vision-Language-Action Models for Force-aware Manipulationcited by 13
  16. 2025LatBot: Distilling Universal Latent Actions for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 10
  17. 2025HiMoE-VLA: Hierarchical Mixture-of-Experts for Generalist Vision-Language-Action Policiescited by 10
  18. 2026MMaDA-VLA: Large Diffusion Vision-Language-Action Model with Unified Multi-Modal Instruction and Generationcited by 10
  19. 2024WHALE: Towards Generalizable and Scalable World Models for Embodied Decision-makingcited by 9
  20. 2025SPECI: Skill Prompts based Hierarchical Continual Imitation Learning for Robot Manipulationcited by 9
  21. 2024PRIME: Scaffolding Manipulation Tasks with Behavior Primitives for Data-Efficient Imitation Learningcited by 8
  22. 2025GLIMPSE: Do Large Vision-Language Models Truly Think With Videos or Just Glimpse at Them?cited by 8
  23. 2026RotVLA: Rotational Latent Action for Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 8
  24. 2024Student-Informed Teacher Trainingcited by 6
  25. 2024BiKC: Keypose-Conditioned Consistency Policy for Bimanual Robotic Manipulationcited by 5
  26. 2025Open-Source Multimodal Moxin Models with Moxin-VLM and Moxin-VLAcited by 5
  27. 2026Efficient Long-Horizon Vision-Language-Action Models via Static-Dynamic Disentanglementcited by 5
  28. 2024A Backbone for Long-Horizon Robot Task Understandingcited by 4
  29. 2023Cloud-Based Hierarchical Imitation Learning for Scalable Transfer of Construction Skills from Human Workers to Assisting Robotscited by 2
  30. 2025Learning Long-Horizon Robot Manipulation Skills via Privileged Actioncited by 2
  31. 2025Robo-DM: Data Management For Large Robot Datasetscited by 2
  32. 2025Hierarchical DLO Routing with Reinforcement Learning and In-Context Vision-language Modelscited by 2
  33. 2024Automating Deformable Gasket Assemblycited by 1
  34. 2024Implicit Contact Diffuser: Sequential Contact Reasoning with Latent Point Cloud Diffusioncited by 1
  35. 2025Find the Fruit: Zero-Shot Sim2Real RL for Occlusion-Aware Plant Manipulationcited by 1
  36. 2025Modality Selection and Skill Segmentation via Cross-Modality Attentioncited by 0
  37. 2025CaRoBio: 3D Cable Routing with a Bio-inspired Gripper Fingernailcited by 0
  38. 2025SAGE: Scene Graph-Aware Guidance and Execution for Long-Horizon Manipulation Taskscited by 0

50 most cited of 60 All 60 (JSON)

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  1. 2021Bottom-Up Skill Discovery from Unsegmented Demonstrations for Long-Horizon Robot Manipulation
  2. 2024Precise and Dexterous Robotic Manipulation via Human-in-the-Loop Reinforcement Learning
  3. 2023RObotic MAnipulation Network (ROMAN) -- Hybrid Hierarchical Learning for Solving Complex Sequential Tasks
  4. 2026TRACT: Temporally Routed Action Chunks with Chronological Phase Authority for Contact-Rich Manipulation
  5. 2025Multi-Stage Manipulation with Demonstration-Augmented Reward, Policy, and World Model Learning
  6. 2025Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Insertion of Flexible Cables in Industrial Settings
  7. 2020Learning to Generalize Across Long-Horizon Tasks from Human Demonstrations
  8. 2026Industrial Dexterity Benchmark: A Hardware-Software Benchmarking Platform for Industrial Dexterous Manipulation ↗