Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.48550/arXiv.2512.11250

Publication Title

arXiv

Pages

35 pp.

Abstract

This work develops a control-centric framework for a custom 4-DOF rigid-body manipulator by coupling a reduced-order Pontryagin’s Maximum Principle (PMP) controller with a physics-informed Gradient Descent stage. The reduced PMP model provides a closed-form optimal control law for the joint accelerations, while the Gradient Descent module determines the corresponding time horizons by minimizing a cost functional built directly from the full Rigid-Body Dynamics. Structural-mechanics reaction analysis is used only to initialize feasible joint velocities—most critically the azimuthal component—ensuring that the optimizer begins in a physically admissible region. The resulting kinematic trajectories and dynamically consistent time horizons are then supplied to the symbolic Euler–Lagrange model to yield closed-form inverse-dynamics inputs. This pipeline preserves a strict control-theoretic structure while embedding the physical constraints and loading behavior of the manipulator in a computationally efficient way.

Rights

© 2025 The Authors.

Under review at IEEEXplore.

Comments

This is a pre-print. It has not undergone peer review.

Original Publication Citation

Marcinczyk, B., & Beaver, L. E. (2025). Optimal control and structurally-informed gradient optimization of a custom 4-DOF rigid-body manipulator. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2512.11250

ORCID

0000-0002-9770-2740 (Beaver)

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