{"ID":2857292,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08953","arxiv_id":"2510.08953","title":"Direct Data-Driven Predictive Control for a Three-dimensional Cable-Driven Soft Robotic Arm","abstract":"Soft robots offer significant advantages in safety and adaptability, yet achieving precise and dynamic control remains a major challenge due to their inherently complex and nonlinear dynamics. Recently, Data-enabled Predictive Control (DeePC) has emerged as a promising model-free approach that bypasses explicit system identification by directly leveraging input-output data. While DeePC has shown success in other domains, its application to soft robots remains underexplored, particularly for three-dimensional (3D) soft robotic systems. This paper addresses this gap by developing and experimentally validating an effective DeePC framework on a 3D, cable-driven soft arm. Specifically, we design and fabricate a soft robotic arm with a thick tubing backbone for stability, a dense silicone body with large cavities for strength and flexibility, and rigid endcaps for secure termination. Using this platform, we implement DeePC with singular value decomposition (SVD)-based dimension reduction for two key control tasks: fixed-point regulation and trajectory tracking in 3D space. Comparative experiments with a baseline model-based controller demonstrate DeePC's superior accuracy, robustness, and adaptability, highlighting its potential as a practical solution for dynamic control of soft robots.","short_abstract":"Soft robots offer significant advantages in safety and adaptability, yet achieving precise and dynamic control remains a major challenge due to their inherently complex and nonlinear dynamics. Recently, Data-enabled Predictive Control (DeePC) has emerged as a promising model-free approach that bypasses explicit system...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08953","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.08953v2","authors":"[\"Cheng Ouyang\",\"Moeen Ul Islam\",\"Dong Chen\",\"Kaixiang Zhang\",\"Zhaojian Li\",\"Xiaobo Tan\"]","published":"2025-10-10T03:00:39Z","proceeding":"cs.RO","tasks":"[\"cs.RO\",\"eess.SY\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}