A Lie Group-Based Iterative Algorithm Framework for Numerically Solving Forward Kinematics of Gough–Stewart Platform

Abstract

In this work, we began to take forward kinematics of the Gough–Stewart (G-S) platform as an unconstrained optimization problem on the Lie group-structured manifold SE(3) instead of simply relaxing its intrinsic orthogonal constraint when algorithms are updated on six-dimensional local flat Euclidean space or adding extra unit norm constraint when orientation parts are parametrized by a unit quaternion. With this thought in mind, we construct two kinds of iterative problem-solving algorithms (Gauss–Newton (G-N) and Levenberg–Marquardt (L-M)) with mathematical tools from the Lie group and Lie algebra. Finally, a case study for a general G-S platform was carried out to compare these two kinds of algorithms on SE(3) with corresponding algorithms that updated on six-dimensional flat Euclidean space or seven-dimensional quaternion-based parametrization Euclidean space. Experiment results demonstrate that those algorithms on SE(3) behave better than others in convergence performance especially when the initial guess selection is near to branch solutions.

Keywords

• Gough–Stewart platform
• forward kinematics
• lie group
• lie algebra
• exponential map
• Gauss–Newton