Motion analysis of a kinematically redundant seven-DOF manipulator under the singularity-consistent method

The SC method is applied to a 7-DOF manipulator arm with a spherical wrist and zero joint offsets, such as the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries PA-10 arm. We obtain two vector fields for driving the positioning subchain and one vector field for the wrist, in analytical form. The former two vector fields are used to realize decoupled motion control of the end-effector and the arm plane, respectively. No additional singularities are introduced, and motion through kinematic singularities is stable and cyclic.