Inverse Kinematics Analysis of a 7-DOF Space Manipulator for Trajectory Design

To solve the inverse kinematics problem for redundant degrees of freedom (DOFs) manipulators has been and still continues to be quite challenging in the field of robotics. Aiming at trajectory planning for a 7-DOF space manipulator system, joint rotation trajectories are obtained from predetermined motion trajectories and poses of the end effector in Cartesian space based on the proposed generalized inverse kinematics method. A minimum norm method is employed to choose the best trajectory among available trajectories. Numerical simulations with the 7-DOF manipulator show that the proposed method can achieve the planned trajectory and pose under the circumstances of minimum angular velocities. Moreover, trajectory results from the proposed kinematics model and inverse kinematics method has the advantages of simple modelling, low computation cost, easy to solve and plan trajectory conveniently. The smooth and continuous joint rotation functions obtained from the proposed method are suitable for practical engineering applications.