A study of multiple manipulator inverse kinematic solutions with applications to trajectory planning and workspace determination

The paper deals with the problem of the multiple solutions of the coordinate transformations for an n-link robot manipulator. Aspect decomposition of the admissible domain of the joint space is introduced and an algorithm for automatic computation of Aspect decomposition is presented. This decomposition takes into account the morphology of the robot arm and the kinematic task definition as well. Two fields of applications are then investigated : - automatic generation of the end effector workspace, - predetermination of trajectories which avoid mechanical limits of the manipulator actuators. Finally an implementation of these methods and algorithms in the CATIA CAD system is given.