Manipulator kinematics

For the robot manipulator to perform a task (for example, grasping or drilling), one needs to bring its end-effector to an appropriate position/orientation.

  • For grasping, the end-effector is a gripper: one needs to bring the gripper to a position/orientation where the gripper can grasp the desired object;
  • For drilling, the end-effector is a drill bit: one needs to bring the drill bit towards the desired hole position, and the orientation of the drill bit must be perpendicular to the drilled surface.
Bringing the drill bit to the desired position and orientation (perpendicular to the panel).
Figure 6. Bringing the drill bit to the desired position and orientation (perpendicular to the panel).

As the robot commands are specified in terms of the manipulator joint angles, one needs to find the mapping between the end-effector position/orientation and the joint angles.

  • The process of finding the position/orientation of the end-effector given a set of joint angles is known as forward kinematics;
  • The process of finding the joint angles that realizes a given position/orientation of the end-effector is known as inverse kinematics.

Sections Forward kinematics and Inverse kinematics respectively presents these two processes.

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