Inverse kinematic functions for redundant manipulators

A general approach to the kinematic control of redundant manipulators using inverse kinematic functions is presented. The principal objective is to find an inverse kinematic function and a workspace such that the ratio of joint speed to workspace speed is bounded. The definition of such feasible workspaces leads naturally to optimization problems aimed at reducing this bound. The application of these results to the inverse kinematics of a redundant wrist illustrates both the theoretical importance of the approach and its immediate practicality. However, for general redundant manipulators, the development of algorithms for constructing feasible workspaces and the refinement of the optimization problem and its solution remain open questions ripe for further research.