A computation effective singularity avoidance method for the underwater manipulator with a non-spherical wrist

In order to perform increasingly complex underwater tasks, we have designed a hydraulic underwater non-spherical wrist manipulator with a binocular vision system and a six-dimensional force sensor mounted behind the end-effector, which can improve the path accuracy and automation capabilities of the system. The system lays a foundation for the high precision and autonomous deep-sea operation and can improve its intelligence level. In this paper, we focus on solving the singularity avoidance problem of the hydraulic underwater manipulator for accurate control, and propose a computationally efficient singularity avoidance method to improve the path accuracy of the manipulator with the non-spherical wrist. Firstly, the singular configurations of the manipulator are analyzed. Secondly, the Jacobian is decomposed into sub-block matrices to obtain the singular factors according to the singular configurations. Thirdly, the singularities are avoided by the approximate damped reciprocal method. Theoretical analysis shows that the computation costs of the proposed method are only one-third to one-half of that of the traditional methods. The simulation results prove that the proposed method can largely improve the path accuracy of the manipulator with less computation costs, which shows that our method would have a certain significance in improving the precision and real-time response of deep-sea operations.