Robot kinematics: symbolic automation and numerical synthesis

Abstract

This volume is a unified treatment of the field of robot kinematics based upon symbolic automation and numerical synthesis approaches. It focuses on visualizing the robot kinematic mechanisms, formulating suitable mathematical models for analyzing the behaviour of industrial manipulators, and deriving efficient algorithms for obtaining the solutions. Three topics in robot arm kinematics are analyzed: the direct kinematics that determine the Cartesian position and orientation of the end effector for the specified values of joint parameters; the differential motions concerning the differential relationship between the command variables in position and orientatoin of the end effector and the joint controlled variables; and the inverse kineamtics that determine the joint variables for a specified Cartesian position and oritentation of the end effector.