Kinematic Redundancy Resolution for the Baxter Research Robot

Robotics is a brand of science and engineering which involves many other fields such as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and bioengineering. Robotic engineers and scientists develop machines that can substitute for humans in various situations. Nowadays, robots are used in hazardous and dangerous environments, factories or where humans cannot survive (outer space, deep sea, etc.). A lot of tasks can be done from something simple such as object lifting and carrying to something complicated such as bomb deactivation, sample collecting, etc. In order to do such tasks, kinematic redundancy plays an important part, especially in the class of humanoid robots. A robot manipulator arm is said to be kinematically redundant when it has more degrees of freedom than it is required for a specific task. The redundancy can be used to achieve additional goals which is importance in robot design and planning. In this thesis, kinematic redundancy resolution will be investigated and applied to Baxter robot. This will include singularity avoidance, collision avoidance, as well as manipulability optimization. As a convenient tool for this research, a method of Baxter’s end-effectors manipulation, namely Cartesian velocity control, will also be developed.