Kinematic Control of Constrained Robotic Systems

This paper addresses the posture control problem for robotic systems subject to kinematic constraints. The key idea is to consider the kinematic constraints of the mechanisms from their structure equations, instead of Artigo submetido em 10/03/2011 (Id.: 01293) Revisado em 27/05/2011 Aceito sob recomendação do Editor Associado Prof. Carlos Roberto Minussi explicitly using the constraint equations. A case study for parallel robots and cooperating redundant robots is discussed based on the following concepts: forward kinematics, differential kinematics, singularities and kinematic control. Simulations results, obtained with a fourbar linkage mechanism, a planar Gough-Stewart platform and two cooperating robots, illustrate the applicability and versatility of the proposed methodology.