Efficient Bezier Velocity Optimization for Free-Floating Space Manipulators

What happened

FAVOR completes 30 of 36 tracking cases, versus 15 for single-step QP, and all 36 interception instances, versus 22 for the spline baseline. It optimizes Bezier joint-velocity curves with linear velocity, acceleration, and continuity constraints.

Decision dimension is independent of rollout resolution. Analytical recursive sensitivities provide task and clearance gradients through the coupled base-arm motion.

With a seven-DoF arm and five simulated spacecraft models, FAVOR achieves 99.8% point-to-point success with 1.779 s mean computation, versus 62.9% and 50.270 s for an IK-initialized position-spline baseline. A controlled ablation shows that finite differences increase mean planning time 4.7-fold.