Automatic generation of kinematics for a reconfigurable modular manipulator system

An algorithm is proposed that automatically generates the Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) kinematic parameters of a reconfigurable manipulator. The DH kinematic parameters are then used to obtain the forward kinematic transformation of the system. The authors also address the problem of obtaining the inverse kinematics of reconfigurable manipulators. To automate the inverse kinematics and to make the procedure as general as possible, they use a numerical approach. In the case of a redundant manipulator they utilize the extra degrees of freedom to achieve singularity avoidance