The study addresses the foundational and challenging task of peg-in-hole assembly in robotics, where misalignments caused by sensor inaccuracies and mechanical errors often result in insertion failures or jamming. This research introduces PolyFit, representing a paradigm shift by transitioning from a reinforcement learning approach to a supervised learning methodology. PolyFit is a Force/Torque (F/T)-based supervised learning framework designed for 5-DoF peg-in-hole assembly. It utilizes F/T data for accurate extrinsic pose estimation and adjusts the peg pose to rectify misalignments. Extensive training in a simulated environment involves a dataset encompassing a diverse range of peg-hole shapes, extrinsic poses, and their corresponding contact F/T readings. To enhance extrinsic pose estimation, a multi-point contact strategy is integrated into the model input, recognizing that identical F/T readings can indicate different poses. The study proposes a sim-to-real adaptation method for real-world application, using a sim-real paired dataset to enable effective generalization to complex and unseen polygon shapes. PolyFit achieves impressive peg-in-hole success rates of 97.3% and 96.3% for seen and unseen shapes in simulations, respectively. Real-world evaluations further demonstrate substantial success rates of 86.7% and 85.0%, highlighting the robustness and adaptability of the proposed method.

Object placement is a fundamental task for robots, yet it remains challenging for partially observed objects. Existing methods for object placement have limitations, such as the requirement for a complete 3D model of the object or the inability to handle complex shapes and novel objects that restrict the applicability of robots in the real world. Herein, we focus on addressing the Unseen Object Placement (UOP}=) problem. We tackled the UOP problem using two methods: (1) UOP-Sim, a large-scale dataset to accommodate various shapes and novel objects, and (2) UOP-Net, a point cloud segmentation-based approach that directly detects the most stable plane from partial point clouds. Our UOP approach enables robots to place objects stably, even when the object's shape and properties are not fully known, thus providing a promising solution for object placement in various environments. We verify our approach through simulation and real-world robot experiments, demonstrating state-of-the-art performance for placing single-view and partial objects. Robot demos, codes, and dataset are available at https://gistailab.github.io/uop/