Quantum neural network-based inverse kinematics of a six-jointed industrial robotic arm

This research examines the potential of quantum-inspired neural networks (QNNs) for solving the inverse kinematics of robotic arms, focusing on the six-degree-of-freedom ABB IRB140 robot. Traditional inverse kinematics approaches face challenges such as non-unique solutions and computational complexity, especially with increasing degrees of freedom. While artificial neural networks (ANNs) have shown promise, they require further improvements, particularly in terms of quantum computing integration. This study introduces a quantum-inspired activation function to multi-layer perceptron neural networks. We compared ANNs and QNNs with and without singularity avoidance, finding that QNNs significantly outperformed ANNs in mean absolute error (MAE), achieving a 15.60 % lower MAE in singularity-free models and a 16.67 % lower MAE in singularity-avoidance models. The QNNs demonstrated superior precision, with a position error of 1.64 mm and an orientation error of 0.00179 radians when avoiding singularities. These results highlight the potential of QNNs to enhance the precision, efficiency, and performance of robotic arm manipulation. Quantum computing offers advantages including parallelism, quantum entanglement, and quantum annealing, which contribute to the QNNs’ superior performance. Overall, this study represents a practical contribution to robotics and quantum computing, paving the way for future research into applying quantum principles to neural network models for robotics.