Abstract: A method of controlling the movements of a robot having a plurality of degrees of freedom includes expressing the attitudes of a hand or a working tool fitted to the arm end of the robot, the by the use of base vectors of a rectangular coordinate system fixed to the hand or the working tool. The attitudes are given as coordinate components related to a rectangular coordinate system which is fixed to the pedestal of the robot and which serves as reference. Interpolation and movement control of the robot is performed on the basis of the coordinate components. By performing control, based on the coordinate components real-time calculation processings is reduced highly accurate robot movement which is smooth in terms of both time and space is accomplished.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for controlling the tracking path of a working element so that the working element moves along a path having a predetermined positional relationship with a working object by adjusting the relative positional relationship between the working element and the working object through the movement of individually movable at least one moving element.

Abstract: There is provided an operation control method for an industrial robot having a plurality of joints, cooperation of these joints allowing a hand or an end effector attached to the hand to perform necessary operation comprising the steps of representing a position and orientation of a hand effecting point relatively determined with respect to the hand or the end effector by a generalized coordinate system suitable for describing the task, deriving respective displacement values of the plurality of joints corresponding to the position and orientation information by using means such as computation, and making the hand effecting point perform necessary operation. For at least one joint among the plurality of joints, displacement is approximately derived by using approximate solution.