Adaptive Non-Linear Tracking Control of kinematically Redundant robot Manipulators1

Past research efforts have focused on the end-effector tracking control of redundant robots because of their increased dexterity over their non-redundant counterparts. This work utilizes an adaptive full-state feedback quaternion-based controller developed in [2] and focuses on the design of a general sub-task controller. This sub-task controller does not affect the position and orientation tracking control objectives, but instead projects a preference on the configuration of the manipulator based on sub-task objectives such as the following: singularity avoidance, joint limit avoidance, bounding the impact forces, and bounding the potential energy.