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Concept
Inverse kinematics
Summary
In computer animation and robotics, inverse kinematics is the mathematical process of calculating the variable joint parameters needed to place the end of a kinematic chain, such as a robot manipulator or animation character's skeleton, in a given position and orientation relative to the start of the chain. Given joint parameters, the position and orientation of the chain's end, e.g. the hand of the character or robot, can typically be calculated directly using multiple applications of trigonometric formulas, a process known as forward kinematics. However, the reverse operation is, in general, much more challenging.
Inverse kinematics is also used to recover the movements of an object in the world from some other data, such as a film of those movements, or a film of the world as seen by a camera which is itself making those movements. This occurs, for example, where a human actor's filmed movements are to be duplicated by an animated character.
In robotics, inverse kinematics makes use of the kinematics equations to determine the joint parameters that provide a desired configuration (position and rotation) for each of the robot's end-effectors. This is important because robot tasks are performed with the end effectors, while control effort applies to the joints. Determining the movement of a robot so that its end-effectors move from an initial configuration to a desired configuration is known as motion planning. Inverse kinematics transforms the motion plan into joint actuator trajectories for the robot. Similar formulas determine the positions of the skeleton of an animated character that is to move in a particular way in a film, or of a vehicle such as a car or boat containing the camera which is shooting a scene of a film. Once a vehicle's motions are known, they can be used to determine the constantly-changing viewpoint for computer-generated imagery of objects in the landscape such as buildings, so that these objects change in perspective while themselves not appearing to move as the vehicle-borne camera goes past them.
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