Design and Implementation of a Graphic Simulator for Calculating the Inverse Kinematics of a Redundant Planar Manipulator Robot

In this paper, a graphics simulator that allows for characterizing the kinematic and dynamic behavior of redundant planar manipulator robots is presented. This graphics simulator is implemented using the Solidworks software and the SimMechanics Toolbox of MATLAB/Simulink. To calculate the inverse kinematics of this type of robot, an algorithm based on the probabilistic method called Simulated Annealing is proposed. By means of this method, it is possible to obtain, among many possibilities, the best solution for inverse kinematics. Without losing generality, the performance of metaheuristic algorithm is tested in a 6-DoF (Degrees of Freedom) virtual robot. The Cartesian coordinates (x,y) of the end effector of the robot under study can be accessed through a graphic interface, thereby automatically calculating its inverse kinematics, and yielding the solution set with the position adopted by each joint for each coordinate entered. Dynamic equations are obtained from the Lagrange–Euler formulation. To generate the joint trajectories, an interpolation method with a third order polynomial is used. The effectiveness of the developed methodologies is verified through computational simulations of a virtual robot. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.