Redundancy resolution of robot manipulators using optimal kinematic control

Globally optimal redundancy resolution in robot manipulators is considered. Some researchers have approached the redundancy resolution with optimization techniques and others with Pontryagin´s principle. In this paper, as another approach we propose the optimal kinematic control. The formulation is: first to convert the redundancy resolution problem to an optimal control problem, and to obtain the globally optimal resolution of redundancy by using the necessary conditions of optimal control. As a result, we get 2n first-order partial differential equations and corresponding boundary conditions. It is shown that these 2n equations are equivalently converted to n second-order differential equations resolving the redundancy in joint acceleration level