D-H PARAMETERS AND HOMOGENEOUS TRANSFORMATION OF

INDUSTRIAL ARM ROBOT “RBI-S6-20”

Rikko Putra Youlia 李凯

175252460402
Mechanical Engineering
Shenyang Aerospace University

I. THEORETICAL ASPECTS
The forward kinematics problem is concerned with the relationship between the
individual joints of the robot manipulator and the position and orientation of the tool
or end effector.

A serial-link manipulator comprises a set of bodies, called links, in a chain and

connected by joints. A link is considered a rigid body that defines the spatial
relationship between two neighboring joint axes. The objective of forward kinematic
analysis is to determine the cumulative effect of the entire set of joint variables.

The Denavit and Hartenberg notation for describing serial-link mechanism geometry
is a fundamental tool for robot analysis. Given such a description of a manipulator it
can be used for established algorithmic techniques to find kinematic solutions,
Jacobians, dynamics, motion planning and simulation.

In order to perform a forward kinematic analysis of a serial-link robot, based on

Denavit - Hartenberg (D-H) notation it is necessary to achieve a five steps
algorithm:

1. Numbering the Joints and Links

A serial-link robot with n joints will have n +1 links. Numbering of links starts
from (0) for the fixed grounded base link and increases sequentially up to (n) for
the end-effector link. Numbering of joints starts from 1, for the joint connecting
the first movable link to the base link, and increases sequentially up to n.
Therefore, the link (i) is connected to its lower link (i - 1) at its proximal end by
joint (i) and is connected to its upper link (i + 1) at its distal end by joint (i + 1).
2. Attaching a local coordinate reference frame
for each link (i) and joint (i+1) based on the following method, known as Denavit
- Hartenberg convention [2], [3]. Fundamentally is necessary to describe the
pose of each link in the chain relative to the pose of the preceding link. It is
expected that this to comprise six parameters, one of which is the joint variable
the parameter of the joint that connects the two links. The Denavit-Hartenberg
formalism [2], [4], [6] uses only four parameters to describe the spatial
relationship
between successive link coordinate frames, and this is achieved by introducing
two constraints to the placement of those frames the axis i x is intersecting or
perpendicular to the axis i-1 z. The choices of coordinates frames are also not
unique, different people will derive different, but correct, coordinate frame
assignments.

Fig. 1 D-H frames allocation and parameters

 (adapted from [4])
In this paper it is used the standard D-H notation [4]. It begins by assignation of i
z axes. There are two cases to consider: if joint (i +1) is revolute, i z is the axis
of revolution of joint (i +1) and if joint (i +1) is prismatic, i z is the axis of
translation of joint (i +1).
Once it was established the i z -axes for the links, it must establish the base
frame{0} . The choice of a base frame is nearly arbitrary. Once frame {0} has
been established, begins an iterative process in which it is defined frame{i}
using frame{i - 1}.
In order to set up frame {i} it is necessary to consider three cases:
a. Axes Zi-1 and Zi are not coplanar (fig.1): The line containing the common
normal Zi-1 to Zi define Xi axis and the point where this line intersects Zi is the
origin of frame{i}.
b. Axis Zi-1 is parallel to axis Zi: The origin of frame {i} is the point at which the
normal that passes through origin of frame {i - 1} intersects the Z i axis. The
axis Xi is directed from origin of frame{i}, toward Z i-1 axis, along the common
normal.
c. Axis Zi-1 intersects axis Zi: The origin of frame {i} is at the point of
intersection of axes Zi-1 and Zi. The axis i x is chosen normal to the plane
formed by axes Zi-1 and Zi. The positive direction is arbitrary. In all cases the
Yi -axis is determined by the right-hand rule: Yi = Zi x Xi.
3. Establish D-H Parameters for each Link
The fundamentals of serial-link robot kinematics and the Denavit-Hartenberg [2],
[3] notation is well covered in standard texts [6]. Each link is represented by two
parameters: the link length (a), and link twist (α), which define the relative
location of the two attached joint axes in space. Joints are also described by two
parameters: the link offset (d), which is the distance from one link to the next
along the axis of the joint, and the joint angle (θ), which is the rotation of one link
with respect to the next about the joint axis. For a revolute joint I θ is the joint
variable and i d is constant, while for a prismatic joint i d is variable and I θ is
constant. The link length and link twist are constant.
Using the attached frames (fig.1), the four parameters that locate one frame
relative to another are defines as:
 θi (joint angle) is the angle between the i-1 x and x i axes about the i-1 z
axis;
 di(link offset) is the distance from the origin of frame {i -1}to the x i axis
along the i-1 z axis;
 ai (link length) is the distance between the i-1 z and i z axes along the x i
axis; for intersecting axes is parallel to i-1 zi × z;
 αi (link twist) is the angle between the i-1 z and zi axes about the xi axis.
4. Calculate the Matrix of Homogeneous Transformation for each Link.
The reference frame {i} can be located relative to reference frame {i - 1} (fig.1)
by executing a rotation through an angle θ i about i-1 z axis, a translation of
distance i d along i-1 z axis, a translation of distance ai along xi axis and a
rotation through an angle αi about xi axis. Trough concatenation of these
individual transformations, the equivalent homogeneous transformation is:
 where R( ) and T( ) are the 4× 4 homogeneous transformation matrix for rotation
and translation that are well covered in literature [1], [4] and [6].

where: c θi is cos(θi) and sθi is sin(θi).

Since the homogeneous transformation matrix of the frame {i} related to the
frame {i - 1}, i-1Ti is a function of a single variable, it turns out that three of the
above four
quantities are constant for a given link, while the fourth parameter, θ i for a
revolute joint and di for a prismatic joint, is the joint variable.
5. Compute the Kinematics Equations of the Robot
The coordinate transformations along a serial robot consisting of n links form the
kinematics equations of the robot is:

where i-1Ti is the homogeneous transformation matrix of the frame {i} related to
the frame {i - 1}.
The result will be a 4× 4 matrix that gives us the information about orientation or
rotation (n - normal vector, o - orientation vector, a - approach vector) matrix and
position (p - vector) vector of the last frame {n}relative to the first frame {0}:

II. ANALYTICAL FORWARD KINEMATIC ANALYSIS OF 6 DOF “RBI-S6-20”

From the figure of schematic drawing it can be seen that the RBI-S6-20 has a serial

6-DOF robotic arm with six revolute joints

(be continued on appendix…)

According to equations (2) and (3) it is obtained matrix of homogeneous

transformation for each link and we compute the kinematics equations of the robot:
III. NUMERICAL FORWARD KINEMATIC ANALYSIS OF 6 DOF “RBI-S6-20”
To carry out the numerical forward kinematic I used Robotic Toolbox ® (version 9.9)
for MATLAB® developed by Peter Corke professor at Queensland University of
Technology. The Toolbox has always provided many functions that are useful for
the study and simulation of classical arm type robotics, for example such things as
kinematics, dynamics, and trajectory generation. The Toolbox provides functions for
manipulating and converting between datatypes such as: vectors; homogeneous
transformations; roll-pitch-yaw and Euler angles and unit-quaternions which are
necessary to represent 3-dimensional position and orientation. These parameters
are encapsulated in MATLAB objects, robot objects can be created by the user for
any serial-link manipulator. It can operate with symbolic values as well as numeric.
The Toolbox is based on a very general method of representing the kinematics and
dynamics of serial-link manipulators [4]. The Robotic Toolbox is an open-source,
available for free and its routines are generally written in a straightforward manner
which allows for easy understanding [7].

(be continued on appendix…)

References
[1] Paul, Richard (1981),” Robot manipulators: mathematics, programming, and
control: the computer control of robot manipulators”. MIT Press, Cambridge,
MA. ISBN 978-0-262-16082-7.

[2] Denavit, Jacques; Hartenberg, Richard Scheunemann (1955), " kinematic

notation for lower-pair mechanisms based on matrices" Trans ASME J. Appl.
Mech 23: 215–221.

[3] Hartenberg, Richard Scheunemann; Denavit, Jacques (1965) Kinematics

synthesis of linkage, McGraw-Hill series in mechanica engineering, New York:
McGraw-Hill, p. 435.

[4] Corke, Peter (2011) Robotics, Vision and Control: Fundamenta Algorithms in
MATLAB, ISBN 978-3-642-20144-8. Springer Tracts I Advanced Robotics, 73.
Springer, Berlin.

[6] M. Spong, S. Hutchinson, and M. Vidyasagar, Robot modeling an control.

Wiley, 2006.

[7] http://www.petercorke.com/RTB/robot.pdf