We propose an effective method for solving the inverse kinematic problem of a specific model of 6-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) robot manipulator using computer algebra. It is known that when the rotation axes of three consecutive rotational joints of a manipulator intersect at a single point, the inverse kinematics problem can be divided into determining position and orientation. We extend this method to more general manipulators in which the rotational axes of two consecutive joints intersect. This extension broadens the class of 6-DOF manipulators for which the inverse kinematics problem can be solved, and is expected to enable more efficient solutions. The inverse kinematic problem is solved using the Comprehensive Gr obner System (CGS) with joint parameters of the robot appearing as parameters in the coefficients to prevent repetitive calculations of the Gr obner bases. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown by experiments.

An effective method for optimizing path planning for a specific model of a 6-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) robot manipulator is presented as part of the motion planning of the manipulator using computer algebra. We assume that we are given a path in the form of a set of line segments that the end-effector should follow. We also assume that we have a method to solve the inverse kinematic problem of the manipulator at each via-point of the trajectory. The proposed method consists of three steps. First, we calculate the feasible region of the manipulator under a specific configuration of the end-effector. Next, we aim to find a trajectory on the line segments and a sequence of joint configurations the manipulator should follow to move the end-effector along the specified trajectory. Finally, we find the optimal combination of solutions to the inverse kinematic problem at each via-point along the trajectory by reducing the problem to a shortest-path problem of the graph and applying Dijkstra's algorithm. We show the effectiveness of the proposed method by experiments.

This paper presents an advanced method for addressing the inverse kinematics and optimal path planning challenges in robot manipulators. The inverse kinematics problem involves determining the joint angles for a given position and orientation of the end-effector. Furthermore, the path planning problem seeks a trajectory between two points. Traditional approaches in computer algebra have utilized Gr\"obner basis computations to solve these problems, offering a global solution but at a high computational cost. To overcome the issue, the present authors have proposed a novel approach that employs the Comprehensive Gr\"obner System (CGS) and CGS-based quantifier elimination (CGS-QE) methods to efficiently solve the inverse kinematics problem and certify the existence of solutions for trajectory planning. This paper extends these methods by incorporating smooth curves via cubic spline interpolation for path planning and optimizing joint configurations using shortest path algorithms to minimize the sum of joint configurations along a trajectory. This approach significantly enhances the manipulator's ability to navigate complex paths and optimize movement sequences.

This paper introduces the Visual Inverse Kinematics problem (VIK) to fill the gap between robot Inverse Kinematics (IK) and visual servo control. Different from the IK problem, the VIK problem seeks to find robot configurations subject to vision-based constraints, in addition to kinematic constraints. In this work, we develop a formulation of the VIK problem with a Field of View (FoV) constraint, enforcing the visibility of an object from a camera on the robot. Our proposed solution is based on the idea of adding a virtual kinematic chain connecting the physical robot and the object; the FoV constraint is then equivalent to a joint angle kinematic constraint. Along the way, we introduce multiple vision-based cost functions to fulfill different objectives. We solve this formulation of the VIK problem using a method that involves a semidefinite program (SDP) constraint followed by a rank minimization algorithm. The performance of this method for solving the VIK problem is validated through simulations.

The signed distance field is a popular implicit shape representation in robotics, providing geometric information about objects and obstacles in a form that can easily be combined with control, optimization and learning techniques. Most often, SDFs are used to represent distances in task space, which corresponds to the familiar notion of distances that we perceive in our 3D world. However, SDFs can mathematically be used in other spaces, including robot configuration spaces. For a robot manipulator, this configuration space typically corresponds to the joint angles for each articulation of the robot. While it is customary in robot planning to express which portions of the configuration space are free from collision with obstacles, it is less common to think of this information as a distance field in the configuration space. In this paper, we demonstrate the potential of considering SDFs in the robot configuration space for optimization, which we call the configuration space distance field. Similarly to the use of SDF in task space, CDF provides an efficient joint angle distance query and direct access to the derivatives. Most approaches split the overall computation with one part in task space followed by one part in configuration space. Instead, CDF allows the implicit structure to be leveraged by control, optimization, and learning problems in a unified manner. In particular, we propose an efficient algorithm to compute and fuse CDFs that can be generalized to arbitrary scenes. A corresponding neural CDF representation using multilayer perceptrons is also presented to obtain a compact and continuous representation while improving computation efficiency. We demonstrate the effectiveness of CDF with planar obstacle avoidance examples and with a 7-axis Franka robot in inverse kinematics and manipulation planning tasks.

Methods for inverse kinematics computation and path planning of a three degree-of-freedom (DOF) manipulator using the algorithm for quantifier elimination based on Comprehensive Gr\"obner Systems (CGS), called CGS-QE method, are proposed. The first method for solving the inverse kinematics problem employs counting the real roots of a system of polynomial equations to verify the solution's existence. In the second method for trajectory planning of the manipulator, the use of CGS guarantees the existence of an inverse kinematics solution. Moreover, it makes the algorithm more efficient by preventing repeated computation of Gr\"obner basis. In the third method for path planning of the manipulator, for a path of the motion given as a function of a parameter, the CGS-QE method verifies the whole path's feasibility. Computational examples and an experiment are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Piecewise constant curvature is a popular kinematics framework for continuum robots. Computing the model parameters from the desired end pose, known as the inverse kinematics problem, is fundamental in manipulation, tracking and planning tasks. In this paper, we propose an efficient multi-solution solver to address the inverse kinematics problem of 3-section constant-curvature robots by bridging both the theoretical reduction and numerical correction. We derive analytical conditions to simplify the original problem into a one-dimensional problem. Further, the equivalence of the two problems is formalised. In addition, we introduce an approximation with bounded error so that the one dimension becomes traversable while the remaining parameters analytically solvable. With the theoretical results, the global search and numerical correction are employed to implement the solver. The experiments validate the better efficiency and higher success rate of our solver than the numerical methods when one solution is required, and demonstrate the ability of obtaining multiple solutions with optimal path planning in a space with obstacles.

The solution and implementation of the inverse kinematics computation of a three degree-of-freedom (DOF) robot manipulator using an algorithm for real quantifier elimination with Comprehensive Gr\"obner Systems (CGS) are presented. The method enables us to verify if the given parameters are feasible before solving the inverse kinematics problem. Furthermore, pre-computation of CGS and substituting parameters in the CGS with the given values avoids the repetitive computation of Gr\"obner basis. Experimental results compared with our previous implementation are shown.

This paper describes a new approach for approximating the inverse kinematics of a manipulator using an Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) based RBFN (Radial Basis Function Network). In this paper, a training solution using the ACO and the LMS (Least Mean Square) algorithm is presented in a two-phase training procedure. To settle the problem that the cluster results of k-mean clustering Radial Basis Function (RBF) are easy to be influenced by the selection of initial characters and converge to a local minimum, Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) for the RBF neural networks which will optimize the center of RBF neural networks and reduce the number of the hidden layer neurons nodes is presented. The result demonstrates that the accuracy of Ant Colony Optimization for the Radial Basis Function (RBF) neural networks is higher, and the extent of fitting has been improved.

W e consider the problem of inverse kinematics (IK), where one wants to find the parameters of a given kinematic skeleton that best explain a set of observed 3D joint locations. The kinematic skeleton has a tree structure, where each node is a joint that has an associated geometric transformation that is propagated to all its child nodes. The IK problem has various applications in vision and graphics, for example for tracking or reconstructing articulated objects, such as human hands or bodies. Most commonly, the IK problem is tackled using local optimisation methods. A major downside of these approaches is that, due to the non-convex nature of the problem, such methods are prone to converge to unwanted local optima and therefore require a good initialisation. In this paper we propose a convex optimisation approach for the IK problem based on semidef-inite programming, which admits a polynomial-time algorithm that globally solves (a relaxation of) the IK problem. Experimentally, we demonstrate that the proposed method significantly outperforms local optimisation methods using different real-world skeletons.