Robotics have numerous applications in industry and rely on manipulators, which are devices that can manipulate materials without the need for direct human contact. Manipulators are able to perform tasks thanks to so-called 'degrees of freedom'. Researchers are working to elucidate kinetics for use with redundant manipulators with potential benefits for industries across the globe in terms of time, energy and cost savings. Dr Kousuke Okabe, Department of Electrical Engineering, National

more »

... e of Technology, which forms part of Wakayama College, Japan, is exploring redundant manipulators and their algorithms and wants to fill some of the existing knowledge gaps in this area. Okabe has found the orthogonal complement of the space spanned by the column vector of the inverse matrix of a generalised manipulator with a degree of redundancy of two or more and is working to find the generalised vector of this orthogonal complement in the future. Okabe and his team are also interested in exploring the effects of kinetics based on the state of movement of the hands. The researchers believe that their research results will be relevant to research on energy conservation in the field of high-speed manipulation, as well as the industrial world.