An Analytic and Optimal Inverse Kinematic Solution for a 7-DOF Space Manipulator

An analytic inverse kinematic solution is presented for a 7-DOF (degree of freedom) redundant space manipulator. The proposed method can obtain all the feasible solutions in the global joint space, which are denoted by a joint angle parameter. Meanwhile, both the singularity problem and the joint limits are considered in detail. Besides, an optimization approach is provided to get one near optimal inverse kinematic solution from all the feasible solutions. The proposed method can reduce effectively the computational complexity, so that it can be applied online. Finally, the method's validity is shown by kinematic simulations.