Simulation tool for kinematic configuration control technology for dexterous robots

Abstract

A simulation tool for designing and testing control devices for advanced robots with an arbitrary number of redundant joints is presented. The novel real-time suitable control technology, called kinematic configuration control, bases on a new approach of resolving redundancy. For redundant manipulators with practical relevant regular kinematic chains, the approach allows to obtain a closed-form solution of the inverse kinematics, as for common nonredundant industrial robots. These offline evaluated symbolic inverse functions need low online computing power. Therefore also controllers for dexterous robots with high degree of redundancy can be implemented on low-cost consumer computer. The described PC-based simulator supports the design of this kind of controller. During a simulation process, the algorithm-specified parameters of inverse functions are optimized. The control algorithm is formed as a separate controller module. After verification it can be effortlessly transferred into a real robot control device.