Redundancy resolution by minimization of joint disturbance torque for independent joint controlled manipulators

Minimization of joint disturbance torque is proposed as a new optimization criterion for redundancy resolution of independent joint controlled manipulators. In this independent joint control scheme, the performance of actuator control is influenced significantly by the joint disturbance torques including gravity, Coriolis and centrifugal torques, which result in the trajectory tracking error in the joint control system. The control performance of a redundant manipulator under independent joint control can be improved by minimizing this joint disturbance torque in resolving the kinematic redundancy. A 3-DOF planar robot is studied as an example, and the dynamic programming method is used to find the globally optimal joint trajectory that minimize the joint disturbance torque over the entire motion. The resulting solution is compared with the solution obtained by the conventional joint torque minimization.