VRA: Grounding Discrete-Time Joint Acceleration in Voltage-Constrained Actuation

2026-05-11

AI Summary

This work addresses the issue that conventional discrete-time joint acceleration constraints often yield physically unrealizable motion commands under voltage-limited electric actuators, leading to inconsistent execution. To resolve this, the paper introduces the Voltage-Realizable Acceleration (VRA) interface, which explicitly embeds voltage constraints into the acceleration planning layer for the first time. By constructing a voltage-to-acceleration feasibility mapping grounded in the actuator’s physical model, VRA guarantees that generated commands remain executable on real hardware. Experimental validation on electric actuators and a wheeled-legged quadruped demonstrates that VRA effectively eliminates infeasible accelerations, significantly improves execution consistency near constraint boundaries, and substantially suppresses oscillations induced by constraint violations.

Abstract

Discrete-time joint acceleration constraints are widely used to enforce position and velocity limits. However, under voltage-constrained electric actuators, kinematically admissible accelerations may be physically unrealizable, exposing a missing execution-level abstraction. We propose Voltage-Realizable Acceleration (VRA), a joint-level acceleration interface that grounds kinematic acceleration in voltage-constrained actuator physics by restricting commanded accelerations to voltage-realizable constraints. Hardware experiments on electric actuators and a wheel-legged quadruped show that VRA removes unrealizable accelerations, restores consistent near-constraint execution, and reduces constraint-induced oscillations.

Problem

• voltage-constrained actuation
• joint acceleration
• discrete-time constraints
• physical realizability
• execution-level abstraction

Innovation

• Voltage-Realizable Acceleration
• actuator constraints
• discrete-time control
• voltage-constrained actuation
• motion planning