Control-Oriented Learning for Dynamic Tracking and Stability Analysis of Soft Pneumatic Actuators

arXiv:2608.25171v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Soft pneumatic actuators offer inherent compliance and safe interaction but remain difficult to model and control because of their highly nonlinear, distributed dynamics. We present a control-oriented data-driven modeling and control framework that decomposes actuator behavior into a nonlinear static equilibrium model and a linear residual dynamics model identified using Extended Dynamic Mode Decomposition with control (EDMDc). This representation enables feedforward compensation, task-space feedback control, and local closed-loop stability analysis through an augmented linear model. Experiments achieve approximately 1 mm root mean square error (RMSE) during low-speed (approximately 10 mm/s) trajectory tracking and below 10 mm RMSE at higher speeds (approximately 100 mm/s). The framework further achieves stable tracking of highly dynamic user-generated references with peak accelerations exceeding 25 m/s^2 while simultaneously performing real-time obstacle avoidance. Finally, the proposed stability analysis is experimentally validated by accurately predicting stable, marginal, and unstable operating regimes. These results demonstrate that structured, control-oriented learning provides an accurate and practical framework for soft actuator control.

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Source: arXiv cs.RO | 2026-08-27