Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jain, Amit, Linares, Richard
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16824
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909969484349440
author Jain, Amit
Linares, Richard
author_facet Jain, Amit
Linares, Richard
contents Neural network controllers increasingly demand millions of parameters, and language model approaches push into the billions. For embedded aerospace systems with strict power and latency constraints, this scaling is prohibitive. We present Tiny Recursive Control (TRC), a neural architecture based on a counterintuitive principle: capacity can emerge from iteration depth rather than parameter count. TRC applies compact networks (approximately 1.5M parameters) repeatedly through a two-level hierarchical latent structure, refining control sequences by simulating trajectories and correcting based on tracking error. Because the same weights process every refinement step, adding iterations increases computation without increasing memory. We evaluate TRC on nonlinear control problems including oscillator stabilization and powered descent with fuel constraints. Across these domains, TRC achieves near-optimal control costs while requiring only millisecond-scale inference on GPU and under 10~MB memory, two orders of magnitude smaller than language model baselines. These results demonstrate that recursive reasoning, previously confined to discrete tasks, transfers effectively to continuous control synthesis.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_16824
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Tiny Recursive Control: Iterative Reasoning for Efficient Optimal Control
Jain, Amit
Linares, Richard
Machine Learning
Dynamical Systems
Neural network controllers increasingly demand millions of parameters, and language model approaches push into the billions. For embedded aerospace systems with strict power and latency constraints, this scaling is prohibitive. We present Tiny Recursive Control (TRC), a neural architecture based on a counterintuitive principle: capacity can emerge from iteration depth rather than parameter count. TRC applies compact networks (approximately 1.5M parameters) repeatedly through a two-level hierarchical latent structure, refining control sequences by simulating trajectories and correcting based on tracking error. Because the same weights process every refinement step, adding iterations increases computation without increasing memory. We evaluate TRC on nonlinear control problems including oscillator stabilization and powered descent with fuel constraints. Across these domains, TRC achieves near-optimal control costs while requiring only millisecond-scale inference on GPU and under 10~MB memory, two orders of magnitude smaller than language model baselines. These results demonstrate that recursive reasoning, previously confined to discrete tasks, transfers effectively to continuous control synthesis.
title Tiny Recursive Control: Iterative Reasoning for Efficient Optimal Control
topic Machine Learning
Dynamical Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16824