A General Numerical Method for Hyper-Redundant Manipulator Inverse Kinematics

“!Iyper-reduiidaiiI” robots have a very large or anfinile degree of k inemat ic redundancy. Thas paper zntrodaces a n e w generalized resolved rate technique for soli) I 11 g h ype rredun da n t m a n apulat or inverse kzne m a t i c ~ i i s i i r y a ‘backbone curve. ’ Thas method as applicahlr e v e n zn cases w h e n explzczt representataon of the hrickbone curve intransac geometry cannot be wr i t ten an closed f o r m . Problems of end-ef fector trajectory trackziry tvhzch were previously intractable can now be hand l e d easily wi th th i s iechnaque. Examples include confiyirmtrons geirerated usang the calculus of vanat ions . A l 5 0 , the method as natural ly parallelazable f o r f a s t dtga I n l nnd/or analog computa t ion .