3d-movement algo?

[as-man]

We're working on a robot-arm project, and we want to calculate the trajectory/path of the route that the arm (well, really just the end of the arm, where the tool is connected) should take.

Normally, the robot's controller manages the movement of the 6 joints, and it will now too. All we want to do is to tell the tip of the arm, the tool, where to go.

So we immediately thought that in the world of 3d game-programming there might excist such an algorithm.

To summarize: we need an algorith which lets us specify the path of a certain point (the tool-tip) in space.

Links, descriptions etc. would be nice, if you have examples in other languages thats fine too.

thanks

-asle frantzen and martin groh (doing our graduation-project for our bachelor-degree in computer-engineering)

[ZbuffeR]

It looks like a composition of transformations and switching cordinates from cartesian x,y,z to some suite of polar r,theta,phi ?

[protonovus]

I've never thought about using 3D theory for robotics, but I'm sure certain skeletal animation techniques would work well for this (ignore the MS3D stuff): http://rsn.gamedev.net

[ZbuffeR]

At last !
I finally recall the correct keywords :
inverse kinematics

You will find plenty of robot related stuff with google.