Task-priority redundancy resolution for underwater vehicle-manipulator systems

Abstract

An underwater vehicle-manipulator system (UVMS) usually has more degrees of freedom than those required to attain given end-effector postures. Therefore, the UVMS is a redundant system and kinematic control algorithms can be applied aimed at achieving additional control objectives such as energy savings or increase of system manipulability. This paper presents a task-priority inverse kinematics approach to redundancy resolution for a UVMS. Three case studies are developed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique in different applications.