Kinematics and trajectory planning of a novel humanoid manipulator for table tennis

A novel 7-DOF humanoid manipulator used to play table tennis is presented and the inverse kinematics, by which the anthropomorphic solutions can be obtained, is established according to the architecture of the manipulator. The manipulator moves very fast when playing the table tennis, and thus it suffers from various joint constraints, such as angular acceleration constraint, angular velocity constraint and angular constraint. In order to improve the success rate of playing, a joint space trajectory planning method that can give full joint driving performance under multiple constraints by optimizing the joint angular acceleration of the manipulator is proposed. The planning method is validated by a simulation analysis and the results prove the correctness and feasibility.