An Application of the Singular Value Decomposition to Manipulability and Sensitivity of Industrial Robots

Abstract

In designing and evaluating industrial robots, it is important to find optimal configurations and locate optimum points in the workspace for the anticipated tasks. In the current paper the singular value decomposition and perturbation analysis are applied to the Jacobian of robot kinematics; the condition number of the Jacobian is then proposed to be a measure of the “nearness” to degeneracy. Then qualitative measures called kinematic “manipulability” and “sensitivity” are proposed. Some properties of proposed measures are investigated and the relation between these measures are discussed. Optimal postures of various types of industrial robots are obtained.