A kinematically redundant manipulator is a serial robotic arm that has more
independently driven joints than are necessary to define the desired pose (position
and orientation) of its end-effector. With this definition, any planar manipulator (a
manipulator whose end-effector motion is restrained in a plane) with more than
three joints is a redundant manipulator. Also, a manipulator whose end-effector can
accept aspatialposeisaredundant manipulator ifithas morethan sixindependently
driven joints. For example, the manipulator shown in Fig. 1.1 has two 7-DOF arms
mounted on a torso with three degrees of freedom (DOFs). This provides 10 DOFs
for each arm. Since the end-effector of each arm can have a spatial motion with six
DOFs, the arms are redundant.
