Inverse Kinematic Solution of a 7 DOF Robotic Manipulator using Boundary Restricted Particle Swarm Optimization

Abstract

Robotic manipulators have widespread applications in the industry, medical surgery, space exploration, and many more. It is an essential requirement for a manipulator to have high precision in positioning the end-effector at the desired location. The solution of this inverse kinematic problem is complex and computationally expensive. In this paper, a boundary restricted particle swarm optimization (BRPSO) is proposed for obtaining the solution of the inverse kinematic problem of a 7 degree of freedom (DOF) robotic manipulator. The boundary restriction method for the decision variables of the PSO algorithm is important as violations of boundaries may lead to infeasible solutions. Results show the proposed method is suitable for solving the inverse kinematic problem while producing feasible solutions within the respective physical limits of the joint angles of the considered 7 DOF manipulator. Furthermore, a comparative study of the positional errors of the end-effector obtained by the proposed method along with results obtained by algorithms like ABC, GSA, and different variants of PSO is presented. The results and the comparative analysis testify that the proposed method surpass some of the popular methods available in the literature.