Dual-arm redundancy resolution based on null-space dynamically-scaled posture optimization

Abstract

Dual-arm robotic systems have been intensively studied in the literature. However, in industrial robotics, the resolution of the kinematic redundancy allowed by the coordinated manipulation task is still an open issue. In fact, typical proprietary industrial robotic controllers do not allow the programmer to modify the inverse kinematics algorithm, and thus to solve redundancy following any specified criterion. In this paper a method to enforce an arbitrary redundancy resolution criterion on top of an industrial robot controller is discussed and applied to the execution of a coordinated manipulation task. The extra degrees of freedom are used to maximize the dynamic manipulability measure in order to reduce the needed torque. Simulations and experimental results achieved on an ABB IRC 5 industrial robot controller are presented.