Qualitative analysis of task kinematics for compliant motion planning

A qualitative geometric reasoning approach to the analysis of robot task kinematics is presented. Qualitative geometric reasoning refers to the process of deriving a solution based on a set of geometric rules in which the concepts are described in terms of symbolic qualitative values and partial-ordering relations. The qualitative kinematic analysis scheme permits computationally efficient approximate solutions of kinematic problems without using exact information on the geometry of mechanisms under consideration, and provides a basis for the functional simulation of mechanisms