This module is used to describe the static position and orientation of
the manipulator linkages. There are two different ways to express the
position of any link: using the Cartesian space, which consists
of position (x,y,z), and orientation, which can be represented by a
matrix called the rotation matrix; or using the joint
space, by representing the position by the angles of the
manipulator's links. Forward kinematics is the transformation from
joint space to Cartesian space.
This transformation depends on the configuration of the robot (i.e., link lengths, joint positions, type of each joint, etc.). In order to describe the location of each link relative to its neighbor, a frame is attached to each link, then we specify a set of parameters that characterizes this frame. This representation is called Denavit-Hartenberg notation. See [7] for more details.
One approach to the problem of kinematics analysis is described in [44], which is suitable for problems where there are one or more points of interest on every link. This method also generates a systematic presentation of all equations required for position, velocity, and acceleration, as well as angular velocity and angular acceleration for each link.