A CONSTRAINED OPTIMIZATION APPROACH TO RESOLVING MANIPULATOR REDUNDANCY

A redundant manipulator can achieve additional tasks by utilizing the degree of redundancy, in addition to a basic motion task. While some a dditional tasks can be performed by optimizing a proper objective func tion, other additional tasks can be performed by satisfying a set of k inematic inequality constraints. In this article, we reformulate a red undancy resolution problem with multiple criteria into a local equalit y and inequality constrained optimization problem, and propose a metho d to solve it at velocity level. The proposed method is efficient, esp ecially when the number of additional tasks is larger than the degree of redundancy. It also systematically assigns the priorities between t he additional tasks. Besides the computational efficiency, the method has a cyclic property. (C) 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.