Feasible Motion Solutions for Serial Manipulators at Singular Configurations

When a serial manipulator is at a singular configuration, the Jacobian matrix will lose its full rank causing the manipulator to lose one or more degrees of freedom. This paper presents a novel approach to model the manipulator kinematics and solve for feasible motions of a manipulator at singular configurations such that the precise path tracking of a manipulator at such configurations is possible. The joint screw linear dependency is determined by using known line varieties so that not only the singular configurations of a manipulator can be identified but also the dependent joint screws can be determined. Feasible motions in Cartesian space are identified by using the theory of reciprocal screws and the resulting equations of constraint. The manipulator first-order kinematics is then modeled by isolating the linearly dependent columns and rows of the Jacobian matrix such that the mapping between the feasible motions in Cartesian space and the joint space motions can be uniquely determined. Finally, a numerical example is used to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach. The simulation results show that a PUMA-type robot can successfully track a path that is singular at all times.

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