A comparison of analysis methods of redundant multibody systems (Q1118428)

Recently there has been increased interest in the analysis of redundant multibody systems dynamics. The interest in redundant systems is spurred by the notion that many physical systems of practical importance may be modelled as redundant multibody systems. A principal question arising in the control of redundant systems is: How should the redundant degrees of freedom be used to optimize the system motion for a given task ? Attempts to answer this question invariably lead to an analysis to constraint equations imposed upon the system. The constraints arise from the task requirements and the desired motion optimization. The task requirement generally pertains to the motion of a body at an extremity of the system. The governing equations to be solved then consist of the dynamics equations and the constraint equations. Several methods have been proposed to solve the governing equations (and thus resolve the redundancy). In this paper we compare two of the most popular of these methods: the pseudoinverse method and the orthogonal complement method. The balance of the paper itself is divided into three sections with the first section discussing the governing equations and the two solution methods. An equivalence of the methods is established in the second section. A comparison of the methods and concluding remarks are presented in the third section.