Global path planning of redundant manipulators based on self-motion topology

This paper explores the intrinsic self-motion manifold topology structure in the presence of kinematic constraints. The objective is to design an algorithms structure to address redundancy resolution and path planning for redundant manipulators in the global sense. The proposed top-down algorithm structure provides a global view of the search space with the help of a connectivity graph in the top layer where path options are obtained for further exploration in the lower layers. A 3-DOF planar manipulator is used to illustrate the methodology and a real application is based on the AAI Arm