Implementation of a high performance LSI for inverse kinematics computation

The authors present an LSI (large-scale integrated) circuit for high-speed inverse kinematics computation. They demonstrate that inverse kinematic solutions can be described by two-dimensional vector rotations and arc tangent operations, and that these operations can be efficiently computed by the coordinate rotation digital computer (CORDIC) algorithms. The chip is fabricated using 1.5-μm CMOS gate array technology, and the design of the arithmetic unit on the chip is based on the CORDIC algorithms. Pipelining is fully used in the processor to enhance the operating ratio up to 100%. The resulting compact inverse kinematics processor is composed of the above chip and a few memory chips for program and data. The processor can be used for various kinds of manipulators.