Dynamic Control of Redundant Manipulators

Redundant manipulators provide increased flexibility for the execution of complex tasks. The redundancy of such manipulators can be effectively used to avoid obstacles, avoid singularities, and maintain a high degree of manipulability while performing the desired end effector task. The extra degrees of freedom of a redundant manipulator are exhibited as joint velocities that do not contribute to the velocity of the end effector. In this paper, we provide a dynamic control law that guarantees the tracking of a given end effector trajectory and also provides for the control of the redundant joint velocity. The desired redundant joint velocity can then be specified to optimize a cost function over the configurations allowed by the extra degrees of freedom that achieve the given end effector position.