Efficient Bezier Velocity Optimization for Free-Floating Space Manipulators

Abstract:We present FAVOR (Free-floating Arm Velocity Optimization with Recursive Sensitivities), a planner for collision-free reaching, tracking, and prescribed-time pre-grasp interception on an unactuated spacecraft. It optimizes Bezier joint-velocity curves with linear velocity, acceleration, and continuity constraints. Decision dimension is independent of rollout resolution. Analytical recursive sensitivities provide task and clearance gradients through the coupled base-arm motion. Parallel evaluation, caching, and incremental collision discovery reduce computation. With a seven-DoF arm and five simulated spacecraft models, FAVOR achieves 99.8% point-to-point success with 1.779 s mean computation, versus 62.9% and 50.270 s for an IK-initialized position-spline baseline. Means include failures and timeouts. FAVOR completes 30 of 36 tracking cases, versus 15 for single-step QP, and all 36 interception instances, versus 22 for the spline baseline. A controlled ablation shows that finite differences increase mean planning time 4.7-fold.

Robotics (cs.RO)

arXiv:2609.31880 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2609.31880v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.31880 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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