Motion Control Algorithms for Sensor-Equipped Robots

This paper deals with the development of kinematic algorithms for the control of sensor-equipped robots. The kinematics is solved in the sensor coordinate system, which reduces the computation efforts, and allows the elimination of the first joint encoder. Simplification of the algorithms can be obtained when approximations are used to solve the inverse kinematics. Three control algorithms based on approximations are presented. However, with these algorithms, convergence to the target is not always guaranteed. A Theorem which specifies the sufficient conditions required for a trajectory to converge to a target point is proved. Based on this Theorem robot parameters can be selected in the design stage of the manipulator. This is illustrated for several types of manipulators.