Dynamic control of redundant manipulators

Redundant manipulators provide increased flexibility for the execution of complex tasks. Redundancy is often required to maintain manipulability and avoid obstacles while completing the required task. Self-motion is the internal (joint) motion of the manipulator that does not contribute to the end effector motion. In this article we provide a dynamic feedback control law that guarantees the tracking of a desired end effector trajectory and provides redundancy resolution by making the self-motion of the manipulator flow along the projection of a given arbitrary vector field. By choosing this vector field to be the gradient of a cost function, for example, the manipulator can be made to seek an optimum configuration. The effectiveness of the control law is illustrated with simulation results.