Generation of closed-form inverse kinematics for reconfigurable robots

Abstract

For reconfigurable robots, the automatic generation of inverse kinematics is a key problem, because such robots may assume various configurations. In this paper, the screw and product-of-exponentials (POE) formula are used to model the kinematics of reconfigurable robots. The POE formula can be converted to canonical subproblems through decomposition and adjoint transformation. Three classes and 28 types of subproblems containing geometric or algebraic solutions are identified and solved, which can be reused in different configurations. A generalized, decomposable, and reusable approach for close-form inverse kinematics of reconfigurable robots is developed based on POE and subproblems. The effectiveness of this method is shown in an example.

Keywords

reconfigurable robot, inverse kinematics, product of exponentials formula, subproblem