Velocity and acceleration level inverse kinematic calculation alternatives for redundant manipulators

Abstract

For both non-redundant and redundant systems, the inverse kinematics (IK) calculation is a fundamental step in the control algorithm of fully actuated serial manipulators. The tool-center-point (TCP) position is given and the joint coordinates are determined by the IK. Depending on the task, robotic manipulators can be kinematically redundant. That is when the desired task possesses lower dimensions than the degrees-of-freedom of a redundant manipulator. The IK calculation can be implemented numerically in several alternative ways not only in case of the redundant but also in the non-redundant case. We study the stability properties and the feasibility of a tracking error feedback and a direct tracking error elimination approach of the numerical implementation of IK calculation both on velocity and acceleration levels. The feedback approach expresses the joint position increment stepwise based on the local velocity or acceleration of the desired TCP trajectory and linear feedback terms. In the direct error elimination concept, the increment of the joint position is directly given by the approximate error between the desired and the realized TCP position, by assuming constant TCP velocity or acceleration. We investigate the possibility of the implementation of the direct method on acceleration level. The investigated IK methods are unified in a framework that utilizes the idea of the auxiliary input. Our closed form results and numerical case study examples show the stability properties, benefits and disadvantages of the assessed IK implementations.