All kinds of singularity avoidance in redundant manipulators for autonomous manipulation

  • Kim, Jin-Hyun (Robotics & Bio-Mechatronics Lab., Dept. of Mechanical Engineering Pohang University of Science & Technology(POSTECH)) ;
  • Marani, Giacomo (Autonomous Systems Laboratory, University of Hawaii) ;
  • Chung, Wan-Kyun (Robotics & Bio-Mechatronics Lab., Dept. of Mechanical Engineering Pohang University of Science & Technology(POSTECH)) ;
  • Yuh, Jun-Ku (Autonomous Systems Laboratory, University of Hawaii)
  • Published : 2003.10.22

Abstract

There are three kinds of singularity in controlling redundant manipulators. Kinematic, algorithmic and representation singularities are those. If manipulators fall into any singularity without proper action to avoid it, the control system must go away from our desire, and we can meet a dangerous situation. Hence, we have to deal the singularities very carefully. In this paper, we describe an on-line solution for avoiding the occurrence of both algorithmic and kinematic singularities in task-priority based kinematic controllers of robotic manipulators. Representation singularity can be easily avoided by using proper representation algorithm, so, in this paper, we only consider kinematic and algorithmic singularities. The proposed approach uses a desired task reconstruction and a successive task projection in order to maintain the measure for singularity over a user defined minimum value. It shows a gain in performance and a better task error especially when working in proximity of singular configurations. It is particularly suitable for autonomous systems where an off-line trajectory control scheme is often not applicable. The advantage and performance of the proposed controller is verified by simulation works. And, the experiment with real manipulator is remaining for the future works.

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