A complete analytical solution to the inverse kinematics of the Pioneer 2 robotic arm

Abstract

For robotic manipulators that are redundant or with high degrees of freedom (dof), an analytical solution to the inverse kinematics is very difficult or impossible. Pioneer 2 robotic arm (P2Arm) is a recently developed and widely used 5-dof manipulator. There is no effective solution to its inverse kinematics to date. This paper presents a first complete analytical solution to the inverse kinematics of the P2Arm, which makes it possible to control the arm to any reachable position in an unstructured environment. The strategies developed in this paper could also be useful for solving the inverse kinematics problem of other types of robotic arms.