Optimal pose selection for calibration of planar anthropomorphic manipulators

•Calibration experiment design for serial anthropomorphic manipulators with arbitrary number of links.•Simple rules for selection of manipulator configurations that allow user essentially improving calibration accuracy.•The results can be useful for calibration simple planar manipulators and complicated spatial mechanisms.•Developed results are illustrated by several examples that deal with typical planar manipulators and an anthropomorphic industrial robot.

The paper is devoted to the calibration experiment design for serial anthropomorphic manipulators with arbitrary number of links. It proposes simple rules for the selection of manipulator configurations that allow the user to essentially improve calibration accuracy and reduce identification errors. Although the main results have been obtained for the planar manipulators, they can be also useful for calibration of more complicated mechanisms. The efficiency of the proposed approach is illustrated with several examples that deal with typical planar manipulators and an anthropomorphic industrial robot.