Event-Time Hybrid Optimal Control for Robotic Table Tennis Serves

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2608.08157v1
• Date: Sat, 08 Aug 2026 14:35:22 GMT
• Title: Event-Time Hybrid Optimal Control for Robotic Table Tennis Serves
• Abstract summary: Robotic table tennis serves require high ball velocity and spin while respecting the robot's kinodynamic limits.<n>We formulate spin-controlled serve generation as an event-time acOCP that optimize the racket impact velocity and orientation.<n>Results show that event-time optimal control efficiently generates physically valid, kinodynamically feasible serves.
• Score: 7.9016044167814785
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
• Abstract: Robotic table tennis serves require high ball velocity and spin while respecting the robot's kinodynamic limits. Unlike rally strokes, a valid serve must also bounce on the server's side and clear the net, yielding a hybrid system with nonlinear flight and impact dynamics. We formulate spin-controlled serve generation as an event-time \ac{OCP} that optimizes the racket impact velocity and orientation together with the bounce, net-crossing, and landing times, enabling direct enforcement at phase boundaries of table-bounce and net-clearance constraints. The racket velocity and orientation are then converted into a complete kinodynamically feasible motion through a second \ac{OCP} enforcing joint-position, velocity, and torque limits. We evaluate the method numerically and on a KUKA Agilus robot. Compared with a fixed-step formulation with root localization, the proposed event-time formulation reduces the median solve time by a factor of 4.1 while maintaining comparable landing accuracy, spin accuracy, and serve validity. Real-robot experiments demonstrate controlled placement and topspin, backspin, and sidespin serves, with a mean landing error of $13.1 \pm 7.3$~cm and spin rates up to 30~rps. These results show that event-time optimal control efficiently generates physically valid, kinodynamically feasible serves while accounting for nonlinear aerodynamic and impact effects.

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