# Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Insertion of Flexible Cables in Industrial Settings

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13731 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13731/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 28 of its 30 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Sep 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01290/) (2018)
- [SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00714/) (2024)
- [CURL: Contrastive Unsupervised Representations for Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04136/) (2020)
- [R3M: A Universal Visual Representation for Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12601/) (2022)
- [Image Augmentation Is All You Need: Regularizing Deep Reinforcement Learning from Pixels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.13649/) (2020)
- [BC-Z: Zero-Shot Task Generalization with Robotic Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02005/) (2022)
- [Reinforcement Learning with Augmented Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.14990/) (2020)
- [VIP: Towards Universal Visual Reward and Representation via Value-Implicit Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.00030/) (2022)
- [Mastering Visual Continuous Control: Improved Data-Augmented Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.09645/) (2021)
- [Leveraging Demonstrations for Deep Reinforcement Learning on Robotics Problems with Sparse Rewards](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.08817/) (2017)
- [Residual Reinforcement Learning for Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03201/) (2018)
- [Improving Sample Efficiency in Model-Free Reinforcement Learning from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.01741/) (2019)
- [End-to-End Robotic Reinforcement Learning without Reward Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07854/) (2019)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning for Industrial Insertion Tasks with Visual Inputs and Natural Rewards](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05841/) (2019)
- [IndustReal: Transferring Contact-Rich Assembly Tasks from Simulation to Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17110/) (2023)
- [Sim2Real Transfer for Reinforcement Learning without Dynamics Randomization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.11635/) (2020)
- [NeRF2Real: Sim2real Transfer of Vision-guided Bipedal Motion Skills using Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.04932/) (2022)
- [A Practical Approach to Insertion with Variable Socket Position Using Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.01531/) (2018)
- [Meta-Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Industrial Insertion Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.14404/) (2020)
- [Robust Multi-Modal Policies for Industrial Assembly via Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrations: A Large-Scale Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11512/) (2021)
- [Residual Learning from Demonstration: Adapting DMPs for Contact-rich Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.07682/) (2020)
- [Learning Visual Robotic Control Efficiently with Contrastive Pre-training and Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07975/) (2020)
- [Learning Dense Rewards for Contact-Rich Manipulation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.08458/) (2020)
- [Real2Sim or Sim2Real: Robotics Visual Insertion using Deep Reinforcement Learning and Real2Sim Policy Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02679/) (2022)
- [Combining Learning from Demonstration with Learning by Exploration to Facilitate Contact-Rich Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.05904/) (2021)
- [Learning from SAM: Harnessing a Foundation Model for Sim2Real Adaptation by Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15562/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The industrial insertion of flexible flat cables (FFCs) into receptacles presents a significant challenge owing to the need for submillimeter precision when handling the deformable cables. In manufacturing processes, FFC insertion with robotic manipulators often requires laborious human-guided trajectory generation. While Reinforcement Learning (RL) offers a solution to automate this task without modeling complex properties of FFCs, the nondeterminism caused by the deformability of FFCs requires significant efforts and time on training. Moreover, training directly in a real environment is dangerous as industrial robots move fast and possess no safety measure. We propose an RL algorithm for FFC insertion that leverages a foundation model-based real-to-sim approach to reduce the training time and eliminate the risk of physical damages to robots and surroundings. Training is done entirely in simulation, allowing for random exploration without the risk of physical damages. Sim-to-real transfer is achieved through semantic segmentation masks which leave only those visual features relevant to the insertion tasks such as the geometric and spatial information of the cables and receptacles. To enhance generality, we use a foundation model, Segment Anything Model 2 (SAM2). To eleminate human intervention, we employ a Vision-Language Model (VLM) to automate the initial prompting of SAM2 to find segmentation masks. In the experiments, our method exhibits zero-shot capabilities, which enable direct deployments to real environments without fine-tuning.