An ultra-multi link manipulator

Describes a distributed autonomous control for an ultra-multi plane manipulator. Each controller independently determines the way how to move each link. The necessary information for the controller is the target position, the position of the end-effector and the position of the link. Each controller has the same control law and common information on the target position and the end-effector position. Thus, the authors call it 'distributed autonomous'. The proposed control architecture has two main advantages: (1) robustness, even if several number of links are out of order, the total system will still work normally; and (2) obstacle avoidance, if the obstacle satisfies some conditions, the robotic manipulator will avoid it automatically.<>