Manipulator Kinematics Toolbox

This is a C library of functions for modeling the kinematics of serial link or branched manipulators.  Its functions can be called from all C/C++ and other programs which can call C libraries.  It generically supports n joints and m end-effectors (EE).  The fixed parameters associated with a given manipulator are read from an input data file.

For manipulator simulations or control, an externally supplied scheduling executive is required which is to model 2 instances of the target manipulator using this C library.  The first instance is the command and the second is the measured.

This C library provides functions to calculate and accommodate:

• forward kinematics

• kinematic Jacobian

• resolved motion rate algorithm, accommodating kinematically redundant manipulators

• inverse kinematics

• joint limits

• joint rate limits

• EE rate limits

• self-collision detections

• distance to singularities

• autotracking by EEs

• kinematic Hessian

This software has been used and tested extensively at the Automation, Robotics, and Simulation Division of NASA Johnson Space Center.

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