Optimal Control Approach for Non-prehensile Ball Juggling Using a 7-DoF Manipulator

[2606.06704] Optimal Control Approach for Non-prehensile Ball Juggling Using a 7-DoF Manipulator

[Submitted on 4 Jun 2026]

Title:Optimal Control Approach for Non-prehensile Ball Juggling Using a 7-DoF Manipulator

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Abstract:Non-prehensile object manipulation skills are important for real-world robot interactions, enabling highly dynamic tasks such as balancing a glass on a tray or the controlled sliding of items on a table. Among such tasks, those characterised by high-speed manipulation requirements and general sensitivity of the resulting hybrid dynamics are particularly hard to accomplish. Within these, juggling can be seen as a highly challenging maneuver to be solved. The key to robotic juggling is achieving dynamic stabilisation of an underactuated object. Since the object does not possess the ability of self-correction, its stability is entirely dependent on the forces applied to it. This creates a system that is sensitive to control inputs, where timing is critical to continuously counteract deviations and maintain the desired behavior. We develop a systematic method to control a 7-degree-of-freedom manipulator performing non-prehensile ball juggling with a tool. Our primary contribution is a model-based framework for generating juggling trajectories and stabilizing a periodic juggling motion for this hybrid system. The framework incorporates a two-stage optimal control approach to compute the underlying feasible motion patterns required for stable juggling. Offline-computed trajectories are then organised to enable real-time error correction without solving optimal control problems online. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the resulting controller by first evaluating its performance in a simulation environment and performing an experiment using a Franka Emika Panda robot.

Comments: 8 pages, accepted at ICRA 2026

Subjects:

Robotics (cs.RO)

Cite as: arXiv:2606.06704 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2606.06704v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.06704

arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history

From: Joel Ramadani [view email] [v1] Thu, 4 Jun 2026 20:44:19 UTC (9,475 KB)

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