Point-to-point motion control of two-arm manipulators

A kinematic position control algorithm is presented for the point-to-point (PTP) motion of two-arm manipulators cooperating on a task. Simple trajectories are assumed for joint displacements between two manipulator configurations by defining joint velocity profiles. The task space errors are continuously monitored during the motion to take corrective action, when necessary, to prevent those errors from exceeding the given tolerance limits. The main objective of this method is to minimize the number of interferences, and, thus, minimize the number of inverse kinematics solutions during the real-time control of the two-arm system. To further increase the efficiency of the algorithm, approximate Jacobian matrices are utilized in the inversion of the kinematic model, as often as possible, to reduce the computational burden on the controller. Computer simulation results are presented for an eight-degree-of-freedom kinematically redundant planar two-arm system.<<ETX>>