A more general closed-form solution to the inverse kinematics of mechanical arms

Abstract

This paper presents solutions to a number of different classes of robot manipulators obtained by locking the redundant joints in a redundant arm. This effort is part of the study of the flexibility offered by the introduction of additional degrees of freedom in mechanical arms. When the extra joints are randomly locked at arbitrary angles, the resultant will be non-redundant arms of various structure for each class of which kinematic solutions are required. The solutions thus cover a whole range of existing and future arm kinematics.