Covariant formulation for the optimal control of jointed arm robots: an alternative to Pontryagin's principle

Abstract

We elaborate algorithms able to efficiently command the actuators of an articulated robot. Our time discretization method is based on cubic and quintic Hermite Finite Elements. The suggested control optimization consists in minimizing directly the selected criterium by a conjugate gradient type algorithm. A generic example illustrates the super convergence of the Hermite's technique.