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Main Authors: Yajima, Masaru, Shin, Yuma, Kawakami, Rei, Kanezaki, Asako, Ota, Kei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.03627
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author Yajima, Masaru
Shin, Yuma
Kawakami, Rei
Kanezaki, Asako
Ota, Kei
author_facet Yajima, Masaru
Shin, Yuma
Kawakami, Rei
Kanezaki, Asako
Ota, Kei
contents Reliable insertion of industrial connectors remains a central challenge in robotics, requiring sub-millimeter precision under uncertainty and often without full visual access. Vision-based approaches struggle with occlusion and limited generalization, while learning-based policies frequently fail to transfer to unseen geometries. To address these limitations, we leverage tactile sensing, which captures local surface geometry at the point of contact and thus provides reliable information even under occlusion and across novel connector shapes. Building on this capability, we present \emph{Touch2Insert}, a tactile-based framework for arbitrary peg insertion. Our method reconstructs cross-sectional geometry from high-resolution tactile images and estimates the relative pose of the hole with respect to the peg in a zero-shot manner. By aligning reconstructed shapes through registration, the framework enables insertion from a single contact without task-specific training. To evaluate its performance, we conducted experiments with three diverse connectors in both simulation and real-robot settings. The results indicate that Touch2Insert achieved sub-millimeter pose estimation accuracy for all connectors in simulation, and attained an average success rate of 86.7\% on the real robot, thereby confirming the robustness and generalizability of tactile sensing for real-world robotic connector insertion.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_03627
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Touch2Insert: Zero-Shot Peg Insertion by Touching Intersections of Peg and Hole
Yajima, Masaru
Shin, Yuma
Kawakami, Rei
Kanezaki, Asako
Ota, Kei
Robotics
Reliable insertion of industrial connectors remains a central challenge in robotics, requiring sub-millimeter precision under uncertainty and often without full visual access. Vision-based approaches struggle with occlusion and limited generalization, while learning-based policies frequently fail to transfer to unseen geometries. To address these limitations, we leverage tactile sensing, which captures local surface geometry at the point of contact and thus provides reliable information even under occlusion and across novel connector shapes. Building on this capability, we present \emph{Touch2Insert}, a tactile-based framework for arbitrary peg insertion. Our method reconstructs cross-sectional geometry from high-resolution tactile images and estimates the relative pose of the hole with respect to the peg in a zero-shot manner. By aligning reconstructed shapes through registration, the framework enables insertion from a single contact without task-specific training. To evaluate its performance, we conducted experiments with three diverse connectors in both simulation and real-robot settings. The results indicate that Touch2Insert achieved sub-millimeter pose estimation accuracy for all connectors in simulation, and attained an average success rate of 86.7\% on the real robot, thereby confirming the robustness and generalizability of tactile sensing for real-world robotic connector insertion.
title Touch2Insert: Zero-Shot Peg Insertion by Touching Intersections of Peg and Hole
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.03627