Resolving Manipulator Redundancy Under Inequality Constraints

Due to hardware limitations, physical constraints such as joint rate bounds, joint angle limits, and joint torque constraints always exist. In this paper, these constraints are considered into the general formulation of the redundant inverse kinematic problem. To take these physical constraints into account, the computationally efficient Compact Quadratic Programming (QP) method is formed to resolve the constrained kinematic redundancy problem. In addition, the CompactInverse QP method is also formulated to remedy the unescapable singularity problem with inequality constraints. Two examples are given to demonstrate the generality and superiority of these two methods: to eliminate the drift phenomenon caused by self motion and to remedy saturation-type nonlinearity problem.