An efficient computational scheme for robot manipulators

A novel robot manipulator computational scheme that is a blend of ordinary and Boolean algebra is presented. This method may also be interpreted as a dedicated compiler that optimizes the online computing time at the expense of the offline stage. The offline requirements are alleviated by the implementation of some general rules that stem from the structure of the robot manipulator equations, and the online computing time is optimized through the use of binary decision diagrams. The algorithm is illustrated on the example of a 2R robot manipulator. The results show a considerable computational improvement over conventional sequential machines, and they clearly point out new computational parallel architectures. It is observed that the proposed algorithm is not restricted to robot dynamic computations, but is also applicable to many other computing structures