Self-Organizing Feature Maps for Modeling and Control of Robotic Manipulators

This paper presents a review of self-organizing feature maps (SOFMs), in particular, those based on the Kohonen algorithm, applied to adaptive modeling and control of robotic manipulators. Through a number of references we show how SOFMs can learn nonlinear input–output mappings needed to control robotic manipulators, thereby coping with important robotic issues such as the excess degrees of freedom, computation of inverse kinematics and dynamics, hand–eye coordination, path-planning, obstacle avoidance, and compliant motion. We conclude the paper arguing that SOFMs can be a much simpler, feasible alternative to MLP and RBF networks for function approximation and for the design of neurocontrollers. Comparison with other supervised/unsupervised approaches and directions for further work on the field are also provided.