# Joint torques prediction of a robotic arm using neural networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00695 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00695/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 19 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Mar 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Optuna: A Next-generation Hyperparameter Optimization Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.10902/) (2019)
- [Lagrangian Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04630/) (2020)
- [Deep Lagrangian Networks for end-to-end learning of energy-based control for under-actuated systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04489/) (2019)
- [Combining Physics and Deep Learning to learn Continuous-Time Dynamics Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.01894/) (2021)
- [A data-efficient geometrically inspired polynomial kernel for robot inverse dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.13317/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Accurate dynamic models are crucial for many robotic applications. Traditional approaches to deriving these models are based on the application of Lagrangian or Newtonian mechanics. Although these methods provide a good insight into the physical behaviour of the system, they rely on the exact knowledge of parameters such as inertia, friction and joint flexibility. In addition, the system is often affected by uncertain and nonlinear effects, such as saturation and dead zones, which can be difficult to model. A popular alternative is the application of Machine Learning (ML) techniques - e.g., Neural Networks (NNs) - in the context of a "black-box" methodology. This paper reports on our experience with this approach for a real-life 6 degrees of freedom (DoF) manipulator. Specifically, we considered several NN architectures: single NN, multiple NNs, and cascade NN. We compared the performance of the system by using different policies for selecting the NN hyperparameters. Our experiments reveal that the best accuracy and performance are obtained by a cascade NN, in which we encode our prior physical knowledge about the dependencies between joints, complemented by an appropriate optimisation of the hyperparameters.