A Simple and Systematic Approach to Assigning Denavit-Hartenberg Parameters

This paper presents a simple and intuitive approach to determining the kinematic parameters of a serial-link robot in Denavit and Hartenberg notation. Once a manipulator’s kinematics is parameterized in this form a large body of standard algorithms and code implementations for kinematics, dynamics, motion planning and simulation are available. The proposed method has two parts. The first is the “walk through”, a simple procedure that creates a string of elementary translations and rotations, from the user defined base coordinate to the end-effector. The second step is an algebraic procedure to manipulate this string into a form that can be factorized as link transforms which can be represented in standard or modified Denavit and Hartenberg notation. The method allows for an arbitrary base and end-effector coordinate system as well as an arbitrary zero joint angle pose. The algebraic procedure is amenable to computer algebra manipulation. Index Terms Kinematics, Denavit-Hartenberg notation P. Corke is with the CSIRO ICT Centre, Brisbane, Australia. JOURNAL OF LATEX CLASS FILES, VOL. 1, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2002 1 A simple and systematic approach to assigning Denavit-Hartenberg parameters.