This is an extension of previous work which used an artificial neural network with a back-propagation algorithm and a lookup table to find the inverse kinematics for a manipulator arm moving along pre-defined trajectories. The work now described shows that the performance of this technique can be improved if the back-propagation is made to be adaptive. Also, further improvement is obtained by using the whole workspace to train the neural network rather than just a pre-defined path. For the inverse kinematics of the whole workspace, a comparison has also been done between the adaptive back-propagation algorithm and radial basis function.

Neural networks were used to find the inverse kinematics of a two-link planar and three-link manipulator arms. The neural networks utilised were multi-layered perceptions with a back-propagation training algorithm. Because of the redundancy in the manipulators studied, this work used lookup tables for the different configurations of the manipulator arm.