2016 IEEE International Workshop on

Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts (ARSO)

Shanghai, China, July 8-10, 2016

Inverse Kinematics Learning for Redundant Robot Manipulators

with Blending of Support Vector Regression Machines
Jie Chen, Henry Y K Lau*, Member, IEEE

Abstract Redundant robot manipulator is a kind of robot

arm having more degrees-of-freedom (DOF) than required for a
given task. Due to the extra DOF, it can be used to accomplish
many complicated tasks, such as dexterous manipulation,
obstacle avoidance, singularity avoidance, collision free, etc.
However, modeling the inverse kinematics of such kind of robot
manipulator remains challenging due to its property of null
space motion. In this paper, support vector regression (SVR) is
implemented to solve the inverse kinematics problem of
redundant robotic manipulators. To further improve the
prediction accuracy of SVR, a special machine learning
technique called blending is used in this work. The proposed
approach is verified in MATLAB with a seven DOF Mitsubishi
PA-10 robot and the simulation results have proved its high
accuracy and effectiveness.
I. INTRODUCTION
Six degrees-of-freedom are needed for a rigid body to
totally define its position and orientation in 3D space.
Conventional industrial robotic arms are built with fewer than
or equal to 6 degrees-of-freedom, such as PUMA 560, 6-DOF
Staubli robot, -DOF Phantom haptic device, etc (Fig. 1). These
robotic manipulators can satisfy common industrial and
scientific tasks, but with the increase of the complexity of
required tasks, researchers find that traditional robotic arms
fail to accomplish tasks requiring highly flexible and precise
motions. Therefore, in 1980s, a novel kind of robotic arm was
proposed with more than six degrees-of-freedom, and
researchers called it the redundant robotic manipulators.
Fig. 1. Examples of non-redundant robot manipulators. From top to down
Redundant robotic manipulators refer to those having right: 6-DOF Staubli robot, 6-DOF articulated robot, and 6-DOF Phantom
more degrees-of-freedom than required for a given task. For haptic device.
example, a 3-DOF planar robotic manipulator is redundant
when it is used for position tracking tasks, but it turns to be analytical solutions to the motion planning problems. But
non-redundant when it is applied to both position and analytical solutions do not exist for redundant robotic
orientation tracking tasks. The extra DOF enhance the manipulators. So a basic issue in effectively operating the
performance of this kind of robotic manipulators by means of redundant robotic manipulators is the online
enabling them to achieve some additional aims (secondary redundancy-resolution problem. During the last three decades,
tasks), such as joint limit avoidance [3], collision free motion various approaches have been proposed to solve the inverse
planning [4], manipulator configuration singularity avoidance kinematics problem of redundant robotic manipulators. These
[5], fault tolerance [6], etc. methods can be roughly divided into two groups, namely the
classic approaches and the heuristic ones. Methods based on
However, with the extra DOF, the inverse kinematics
the pseudoinverse Jacobian matrix and the extended Jacobian
problems or the motion planning problems of the redundant
matrix belong to the classic group, whereas heuristic
robotic manipulators become rather difficult. For conventional
approaches usually involve Neural Networks, Genetic
non-redundant robotic manipulators, there usually exist
Algorithms, Fuzzy Logic and so on.
II. RELATED WORK
* Corresponding author Klein and Huang [6] developed a method based on the
Jie Chen is with the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems
pseudoinverse of the Jacobian matrix for the motion planning
Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (e-mail:
chenjiexjtu@gmail.com). problems of redundant robotic manipulators. By means of
Henry Y K Lau is with the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing self-motion and pre-defined goal functions, it was possible to
Systems Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (e-mail: derive the analytical solutions to the inverse kinematics
hyklau@hku.hk).

978-1-5090-4079-7/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE 267


Fig. 2. Configuration of the Mitsubishi PA-10 robot arm (seven DOF) with
a gripper (three DOF).
Fig. 3. Schematics of the workflow of the blending of support vector
regression algorithm. In this work, only two SVR are used.
problems. But due to the inherent characteristic of the
pseudoinverse-based approach, it was difficult to incorporate
velocity constraints or acceleration constraints into this kind of
schemes. Therefore, the pseudoinverse-based method was not
suitable for velocity level or acceleration level motion control
which drastically limited its applications.
Benzaoui [7] used self-motion vector to make the Jacobian
matrix square and proposed a new method to solve the inverse
kinematics problems called the extended Jacobian method.
The self-motion vector could be decided by some pre-defined
goal functions, such as motion time minimum, energy
minimum, joint displacement minimum functions, etc.
Zhang Yunong [8] solved the inverse kinematics problem
in a totally different way. Unlike other researchers, Zhang
formulated the motion planning problem into a convex
quadratic programming problem, and developed three types of
approaches to solve the QP problem based on recurrent neural
network. Namely the dual neural network, the linear
variational inequalities-based primal-dual neural network, and
the simplified linear variational inequalities-based primal-dual
neural network. Due to the transformation from conventional
inverse kinematics problem to QP-type optimization problem,
268
several constraint conditions could be incorporated which
made the QP solver suitable for many additional applications,
such as obstacle avoidance, singularities avoidance, collision
free and velocity/acceleration level motion planning.
Maria [9] proposed a multi-objective method for the
inverse kinematics problems of redundant robotic
manipulators based on genetic algorithms (GA). GA was a
random search optimization approach which could be easily
implemented due to its simple structure. But different from
conventional single objective optimization, optimization
problems with multiple objectives required additional
information to choose an optimal solution from an entire set of
so called Pareto optimal solutions. Generally speaking, there
were two kinds of methods to realize the multi-objective
optimization, namely the pre-defined approaches and the
post-defined ones. Pre-defined approaches used researchers
experiences or preference as a priori and chose one solution
from the Pareto optimal set. Whereas in post-defined methods,
multiple objectives were combined together to formulate a
single function with weighted coefficients.
In conclusion, classic and heuristic methods for the inverse
kinematics problems of redundant robotic manipulators are
reviewed in this section. The pseudoinverse-based method is
not suitable for velocity level or acceleration level motion
control tasks, the extended Jacobian and the GA methods fail
in repetitive motion planning tasks, and Zhangs recurrent
neural network is difficult to implement. In order to overcome
these drawbacks, a machine learning approach based on
support vector regression (SVR) is proposed in this work, and
a Mitsubishi PA-10 robot arm (seven DOF) is used as the
platform to perform the simulation.
The remaining of this paper is structured as follows:
Section III introduces the blending of support vector machine
for multivariate regression in detail. In Section IV, we first
derive the forward kinematics of Mitsubishi PA-10 robot arm
and visualize its workspace, then the proposed blending SVR
algorithm is used to learn the inverse kinematics of the robot.
Conclusions are drawn in Section V.
III. BLENDING OF SUPPORT VECTOR REGRESSION
A. Support Vector Machine Basics
Suppose that we train a SVM for classification with feature
vector , and among all the training samples, r samples are
determined to be support vectors. Denote them by , i =
1,2, . . . ,r. The decision function expression for classification
problem then takes the following form:
r
f ( x) iyiK ( x, xi) b
i 1
(1)
where is the Lagrange multiplier associated with sample
and K(x,xi ) is a kernel function. Now suppose that support
vector is linearly dependent on the other support vectors in
feature space:
r
K ( x, x k ) ci K ( x, xi )
(2)
i 1
ik
where the are scalar constants. Then equation (1) can be Algorithm 1. Blending of SVR for learning the IK of PA-10
rewritten as: 1:--------------------Generating training and testing examples---------------
2: Sampling q and randomly within their ranges
r r
3: Using forward models to get the positions, orientations, linear and
f ( x ) i yi K ( x, xi ) kyk ciK ( x, xi ) b (3) angular velocities
i 1 i 1
ik ik 4: Forming the training and testing samples
5: ------------------Training support vector regression models---------------
Now define = so that equation (3) can be 6: Loop using SMO algorithm to find the optimal SVR models
written: 7: Feed the SVRs with training examples
8: Use RBF kernel methods to transform the features to infinite space
r 9: First search for the best parameters with grid search method
f ( x) (1 ) y K ( x, x ) b
i 1
i i i i 10: Second search for the best parameters with grid search method
11: Use testing examples to choose the optimal SVR
ik
12: Output the predicted results and calculate the accuracy
(4) 13: End Loop
r
i yi K ( x, x i ) b
i 1
ik With the blending of SVR in this section, the performance
can be further improved.
where:
IV. INVERSE KINEMATICS LEARNING
i i(1 i) (5)
The end-effector position-and-orientation vector in
Equations (4) and (1) demonstrate that the linearly Cartesian space and the joint-space vector are related
dependent support vectors are not required in the nonlinearly by the forward kinematic model (Fig. 2):
representation of the final decision function expression. Note,
however, that the Lagrange multipliers must be modified x = f(q) (10)
according to equation (5) to obtain the simplified
representation. But this is a very simple modification that can However, equation (1) is usually difficult to solve due to
be applied to any linearly dependent support vector that is its nonlinearity and redundancy. Such a problem solving is
identified. then considered at the velocity level:

B. Support Vector Regression x = J(q)q (11)

For regression problems, the SVM can be expressed by the Where x and q denote the m-dimensional end-effector
following form: velocity vector and the n-dimensional joint velocity vector,
r respectively. Jacobian matrix is defined as:
f ( x) i *i ) K ( x, xi) b (6)
i 1 f(q)
J(q) = Rmn (12)
which can be rewritten as: q
r To formulate the IK problem into a machine learning
f ( x) iK ( x, xi) b (7) problem, the forward kinematics is used to randomly explore
i 1 the robot workspace and generate training samples. Then the
blending of SVR is learned. Table I gives the parameters of the
where i =i or i =-*i ,
depending on which constraint is PA-10 robot, and Algorithm 1 illustrates the learning process.
active. Now suppose support vector is linearly dependent
on the other support vectors in feature space according to To generate training samples for the learning algorithm
equation (2). We then find, as for the classification case, that
can be eliminated from equation (6) and this gives:
1
r
f ( x ) i K ( x, xi ) b (8)
i 1 0.5

where:
Z (m)

i = i +k ci . 0

C. Blending of Support Vector Regression

-0.5
One SVM only provides one expert (either for
classification or regression) in the high dimensional space. In
this work, we propose to use N SVM to approximate the -1
-1
inverse kinematics of the PA-10 robot, and the final
-0.5
expression will be a weighted combination of the N experts,
0 1
which can be given by: X (m) 0.5
0.5 0
-0.5
Nn=1 fn (x) 1 -1 Y (m)
f (x) = (9) Fig. 4. Visualization of the workspace of the Mitsubishi PA-10 robot.
N
269
 c5 -s5 0 0 c6 -s6 0 0
0 0 -d5
] , T56 = [-s0 -c0 1 0],
1
T45 = [
s5 c5 0 0 6 6 0 0
0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
c7 -s7 0 0
0 0 1 -d7
T45 = [ ].
s7 c7 0 0
0 0 0 1
where ci =cos(qi ) , and i =sin(qi ) , d3 =0.45m , d5 =0.5m , and
d7 =0.08m. Fig. 4 shows the workspace of the PA-10 robot.
Fig. 5 and 6 show the process of grid search [18] for the
optimal parameters of the SVR algorithm, Fig. 7 and 8
describe the simulation results, and from the figures it can be
clearly seen that the prediction error of the proposed method is
relatively small.
Due to limited space, only comparisons between predicted
and actual joint angles of joint 2, 4 and 6 are presented below,
the results of joint 1, 3, 5 and 7 are equally accurate.

Fig. 5. Rough search for the optimal parameters of the Support Vector
Regression algorithm with grid search method.

(Fig. 3), the forward kinematic model of PA-10 robot can be

derived based on the DH method. The homogeneous
transformation T07 , which defines the state of the end-effector
with respect to the base coordinate system, is the chain product
of successive coordinate transformation matrices of Ti-1,i ,
i=1,2,,7:
n s a p
T07 = T01 T12 T23 T34 T45 T56 T67 = [ ] (13)
0 0 0 1
where n, s, a, pR3 are the normal, sliding, approach and
position vectors of the end-effector, respectively. Besides:
c1 -s1 0 0 c2 -s2 0 0
s c1 0 0
T01 = [ 1 ] , T12 = [-s0 0
-c2
1 0],
0 0 1 0 2 0 0
0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
(14)
c3 -s3 0 0 c4 -s4 0 0
0 0 1 -d3
T23 = [ ] , T34 = [-s0 0
-c4
1 0],
s3 c3 0 0 4 0 0
0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
Fig. 6. Fine search for the best parameters of the Support Vector Regression
algorithm with grid search method.

270
 The average prediction accuracies of each joint are all
above 99%, therefore, it can be concluded that the approach
proposed in this paper is effective and can be applied to
inverse kinematics control of redundant robot arm.
V. CONCLUSION
Redundant robot arms refer to those having more degrees
of freedom than required for a given task. The extra DOF
enhance the performance of this kind of robotic manipulators
by means of enabling them to achieve some additional aims,
such as joint limit avoidance, obstacle and collision free
motion, manipulator configuration singularity avoidance, (a)
fault tolerance, etc. However, with the extra DOF, the inverse
kinematics problems or the motion planning problems of the
redundant robotic manipulator become rather difficult. In this
work, blending of support vector regressions [19] [20] [21]
[22] is proposed to solve the inverse kinematics problems of

(b)

(a)

(c)

Fig. 8. Joint angle prediction error of (a) joint 2, (b) joint4 and (c) joint6.

(b)
redundant manipulators. Simulations in MATLAB have
verified the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed
method. The prediction accuracies of all seven joints of PA 10
are above 99%. Future work will be focused on extending the
proposed method to velocity and torque control, and making
the redundant robot arm to do some real tasks, such as
grasping and assembling.

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