Formulation of the workspace equation for wrist-partitioned spatial manipulators

A solution to one of the outstanding research issues in robotics, namely, that of derivation of the end-effector (EE) workspace equation of a general wrist-partitioned serial manipulator, has been presented in the paper. The equation-coupling manipulator’s Denavit–Hartenberg (DH) parameters, joint variables and coordinates of the EE’s poses has been derived in a seven-dimensional projective space, and then, in the EE’s Cartesian space. The procedure used turns out to be general for any wrist-partitioned serial manipulator, whether redundant or not.