Control of robot in singular configurations for human-robot coordination

In this paper, we propose a new control scheme of a robot in its singular configurations for human robot coordination referred to as the singular configuration control (SCC). In this paper, as an example, we derive the control algorithm for the manipulator "PA-10" produced by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. The scheme controls the manipulator in its singular configurations by appropriately selecting a solution of the inverse kinematics according to the manipulator's configuration so that the manipulator could move even in its singular configurations without stopping the motion. The proposed control algorithm is applied to a robot with dual manipulators referred to as MR Helper and the experimental results illustrate the validity of the singular configuration control.