TABLE OF CONTENT



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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. iii ABSTRACT. vii CHAPTERS

 1 INTRODUCTION. .1

 2 THE INVERSE KINEMATICS PROBLEM. 5

 Notation and Mathematical Preliminaries. 5 Problem Definition. 10

 3 EXISTING SOLUTIONS. 13

 Closed-Form Architectures. 13 Record and Playback. 14 Numerical Techniques. 15

 4 NEW APPROACH. 18

 Link-Frames Assignment. 18 The Reduced System of Equations. 19 Additional Inverse Kinematic Equations. 24 Solving Inverse Kinematic Equations .25 Exchanging Base and End-Effector Frames. 27,

 5 SOLVING 4-DOF MANIPULATORS. 29

 Reduced System of Equations. 29 Special 4-DOF Manipulator Geometries 35

 6 SOLVING 5-DOF MANIPULATORS. 51

 One-Dimensional Iterative Method .51
 Five-DOF Robots with Closed-Form*
 Solution. 63.

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