Home » Educational » Robot control part 2: Jacobians, velocity, and force

# Robot control part 2: Jacobians, velocity, and force

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Jacobian matrices are a super useful tool, and heavily used throughout robotics and control theory. Basically, a Jacobian defines the dynamic relationship between two different representations of a system. For example, if we have a 2-link robotic arm, there are two obvious ways to describe its current position: 1) the end-effector position and orientation (which we will denote $latex \textbf{x}$), and 2) as the set of joint angles (which we will denote $latex \textbf{q}$). The Jacobian for this system relates how movement of the elements of $latex \textbf{q}$ causes movement of the elements of $latex \textbf{x}$. You can think of a Jacobian as a transform matrix for velocity.

Formally, a Jacobian is a set of partial differential equations:

$latex \textbf{J} = \frac{\partial \textbf{x}}{\partial \textbf{q}}$.

With a bit of manipulation we can get a neat result:

\$latex \textbf{J} = \frac{\partial \textbf{x}}{\partial t} \; \frac{\partial t}{\partial \textbf{q}} \rightarrow \frac{\partial \textbf{x}}{\partial \textbf{t}} =…

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