RBF Neural Network Based Shape Control of Hyper-redundant Manipulator with Constrained End-Effector

Hyper-redundant manipulator has more degrees of freedom than the least necessary to perform a given task, thus it has the features of overcoming conventional industrial robot’s limitation to carry out a designated difficult task. When the manipulator carries out the missions such as brushing or writing on a surface, drilling or inspection in a hole, the end-effector of the manipulator usually has both position and orientation requirement. Effective control of the hyper-redundant manipulator with such constrained end-effector is difficult for its redundancy. In this paper, a novel approach based on RBF neural network has been proposed to kinematically control the hyper-redundant manipulator. This technique, using variable regular polygon and RBF neural networks models, is completely capable of solving the control problem of a planar hyper-redundant manipulator with any number of links following any desired direction and path. With the shape transformation of variable regular polygon, the manipulator’s configuration changes accordingly and moves actively to perform the tasks. Compared with other methods to our knowledge, this technique has such superiorities as fewer control parameters and higher precision. Simulations have demonstrated that this control technique is available and effective.