Comparative Analysis of the Inverse Kinematics of a 6-DOF Manipulator : A Comparative Study of Inverse Kinematics for the 6-DOF Saab Seaeye eM1-7 Manipulator with Non-Conventional Wrist Configuration

Abstract: This report presents various methods for solving the inverse kinematic problem for a non-conventional robotic manipulator with 6 degrees of freedom and discusses their respective advantages and disadvantages. Numerical methods, such as gradient descent, Gauss-Newton and Levenberg-Marquardt as well as heuristic methods such as Cyclic Coordinate Descent and Forward and Backward Reaching Inverse Kinematics are discussed and presented, while the numerical methods are implemented and tested in simulation. An analytical solution is derived for the Saab Seaeye eM1-7 and implemented and tested in simulation. The numerical methods are concluded to be easy to implement and derive, however, lack computational speed and robustness. At the same time, the analytical solution overcomes the same issues, but will have difficulties in singularities. A simple path planning algorithm is presented which plans around singular intervals, making it viable to use the analytical solution without encountering problems with singularities.