A dynamic solution to the inverse kinematic problem for redundant manipulators

Redundancy represents one key towards design and synthesis of more versatile manipulators. Obstacle avoidance and limited joint range constitute two kinds of constraints which can be potentially met by a kinematically redundant manipulator. The natural scenario is the inverse kinematic problem which is certainly a crucial point for robotic manipulator analysis and control. Based on a recently proposed dynamic solution technique, the inverse kinematic problem for redundant manipulators is solved in this paper. The kinematics of the manipulator is appropriately augmented in order to include the above mentioned constraints; the result is an efficient, fast dynamic algorithm which only makes use of the direct kinematics of the manipulator. Extensive simulation results illustrate the tracking performance for a given trajectory in the Cartesian space, while guaranteeing a collision-free trajectory and/or not violating a mechanical jointiimit.