A varied weights method for the kinematic control of redundant manipulators with multiple constraints

This paper proposes a varied weights (VW) method for the kinematic control of redundant manipulators with multiple constraints. Each constraint has a varied weight factor to reflect its transition from the inactive state to the active state. At every control loop, only the main task and the active constraint subtasks are considered. A new concept of effective singular value is presented for the design of the damping factor to avoid the pseudo-singularity due to the transition of weight factors. The experiments on the seven-degree-of-freedom Ping-Pong manipulator illustrate the efficacy of the proposed VW method.