Kinematic modeling and control of a robot arm using unit dual quaternions

This paper exploits screw theory expressed via unit dual quaternion representation and its algebra to formulate both the forward (position+velocity) kinematics and pose control of an n-dof robot arm in an efficient way. Efficiency is in less computer memory usage, in fast computation of the equations, in singularity-free representation of task space, in robustness to numerical errors, and in compactness of the representations. The formulation is simple, intuitive and straightforward to implement. We validated this formulation experimentally on a 7 dof robot arm. •Kinematic modeling and pose control of multi-dof robotic arms.•Compact and simple formulation.•Use of unit dual quaternions and its algebra.