Robot Kinematics - Kinematic Equations

Kinematic Equations

A fundamental tool in robot kinematics is the kinematics equations of the kinematic chains that form the robot. These non-linear equations are used to map the joint parameters to the configuration of the robot system. Kinematics equations are also used in biomechanics of the skeleton and computer animation of articulated characters.

Forward kinematics uses the kinematic equations of a robot to compute the position of the end-effector from specified values for the joint parameters. The reverse process that computes the joint parameters that achieve a specified position of the end-effector is known as inverse kinematics. The dimensions of the robot and its kinematics equations define the volume of space reachable by the robot, known as its workspace.

There are two broad classes of robots and associated kinematics equations serial manipulators and parallel manipulators. Other types of systems with specialized kinematics equations are air, land, and submersible mobile robots, hyper-redundant, or snake, robots and humanoid robots.