{"ID":2844459,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.06515","arxiv_id":"2511.06515","title":"Koopman global linearization of contact dynamics for robot locomotion and manipulation enables elaborate control","abstract":"Controlling robots that dynamically engage in contact with their environment is a pressing challenge. Whether a legged robot making-and-breaking contact with a floor, or a manipulator grasping objects, contact is everywhere. Unfortunately, the switching of dynamics at contact boundaries makes control difficult. Predictive controllers face non-convex optimization problems when contact is involved. Here, we overcome this difficulty by applying Koopman operators to subsume the segmented dynamics due to contact changes into a unified, globally-linear model in an embedding space. We show that viscoelastic contact at robot-environment interactions underpins the use of Koopman operators without approximation to control inputs. This methodology enables the convex Model Predictive Control of a legged robot, and the real-time control of a manipulator engaged in dynamic pushing. In this work, we show that our method allows robots to discover elaborate control strategies in real-time over time horizons with multiple contact changes, and the method is applicable to broad fields beyond robotics.","short_abstract":"Controlling robots that dynamically engage in contact with their environment is a pressing challenge. Whether a legged robot making-and-breaking contact with a floor, or a manipulator grasping objects, contact is everywhere. Unfortunately, the switching of dynamics at contact boundaries makes control difficult. Predict...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.06515","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.06515v1","authors":"[\"Cormac O'Neill\",\"Jasmine Terrones\",\"H. Harry Asada\"]","published":"2025-11-09T19:55:50Z","proceeding":"cs.RO","tasks":"[\"cs.RO\",\"math.DS\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}