Dexterity Measures for Optimal Path Control of Redundant Manipulators

In the paper we describe different measures for the quantification of the dexterity of redundant manipulators. We propose certain modifications of some measures in order to be able to measure the dexterity along a specific path. A special attention is given to the systems with constraints. For them some new measures suited for path control have been introduced. Actually, we define a family of measures based on general p-norms. We suggest how to use these measures for controlling redundant manipulators in order to improve their efficiency along the path and to optimize some performance criteria. We study cases where time-optimal motion is required. To illustrate the characteristics of the proposed measures some examples are given.