Second-order kinematic control of robot manipulators with Jacobian damped least-squares inverse: theory and experiments

This paper describes the application of a closed-loop inverse kinematics algorithm to kinematic control of a robot manipulator. The scheme is formulated at the second-order level, i.e., in terms of velocity and acceleration variables, so as to allow the use of joint space computed torque control. A damped least-squares inverse of the Jacobian is used to ensure feasible joint motion in the neighborhood of kinematic singularities. The theoretical analysis of algorithm convergence is performed on the basis of a Lyapunov argument. The results of experiments on a six-joint industrial robot with open control architecture are presented.