Robotic arms are commonplace in today's world. They are used to weld AutoMobile bodies, employed to locate merchandise in computerized warehouses, and used by the Space Shuttle to retrieve satellites from orbit. They are reliable and accurate. This reliability and accuracy is due to the computer a robot arm uses in determining where and how it should move. This control computer is programmed with some basic mathematics. In this paper (MATHEMATICS OF ROBOT ARMS), we will look at the mathematics behind robot arms. We look at three basic problems: kinematics, inverse kinematics and trajectory planning (getting from one point to another). We examine each of these problems separately, using the two-link robot arm. The ROBOTICS program in our Science Fair product demonstrates the concepts presented here.
