Smooth transition between tasks on a kinematic control level: Application to self collision avoidance for two Kuka LWR robots

A common approach for kinematically redundant robot consist of a definition of several tasks properly combined in priority. However, in some cases the task priority needs to be changed in order to successfully perform the desired task without changing the initial strategy. In this paper we propose a novel method for control of kinematically redundant robots, where we focus on a smooth, continuous transition between the primary and the secondary task. The method is based on a null-space velocity control algorithm, which is essential for achieving good behaviour of a redundant robotic system. The effectiveness of the proposed system is demonstrated on a robotic system with two Kuka LWR robots.