Identification of placement parameters for modular platform manipulators

When the six legs of a platform manipulator are individually installed to a new base or different locations of the installation site, the true values of the position and orientation of base joints may not be precisely known to the controller of the manipulator and often inconvenient to be measured directly. In this article, a method to identify position and orientation of base joints for modular platform manipulators is described. Through the measurement of the mobile plate pose, orientation change of base joints, and the leg length increment of prismatic joints leads to a set of nonlinear equations for the identification problem. Methods for solving the identification equations are discussed. The method of dialytic elimination using symbolic manipulation is presented for a special situation. The identification process is illustrated with an example. Q 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.