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Reference-Augmented Learning for Precise Tracking Policy of Tendon-Driven Continuum Robots

arXiv:2604.25698v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Tendon-Driven Continuum Robots (TDCRs) pose significant control challenges due to their highly nonlinear, path-dependent dynamics and non-Markovian characteristics. Traditional Jacobian-based controllers often struggle with hysteresis-induced oscillations, while conventional learning-based approaches suffer from poor generalization to out-of-distribution trajectories. This paper proposes a reference-augmented offline learning framework for pre

Published June 24, 2026 · Category: Robotics

Overview

arXiv:2604.25698v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Tendon-Driven Continuum Robots (TDCRs) pose significant control challenges due to their highly nonlinear, path-dependent dynamics and non-Markovian characteristics. Traditional Jacobian-based controllers often struggle with hysteresis-induced oscillations, while conventional learning-based approaches suffer from poor generalization to out-of-distribution trajectories. This paper proposes a reference-augmented offline learning framework for precise 6-DOF tracking control of TDCRs. By leveraging a differentiable RNN-based dynamics surrogate as a gradient bridge, we optimize a control policy through an augmented reference distribution. This multi-scale augmentation scheme incorporates stochastic bias, harmonic perturbations, and random walks, forcing the policy to internalize diverse tracking error recovery mechanisms without additional hardware interaction. Experimental results on a three-section TDCR platform demonstrate that the proposed policy achieves a 50.9\% reduction in average position error compared to non-augmented baselines and significantly outperforms Jacobian-based methods in both precision and stability across various speeds.

Source

Originally published at arxiv.org.

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