IKSwift: an Inverse Kinematics Accelerator

Summary

We present IKSwift, a specialized hardware design to tackle the inverse kinematics problem. Inverse kinematics is widely used in robotics computing and in computer graphics. The problem takes as input a configuration of mechanical joints, which can be rotational or sliding, that are present in an arm or a leg. Then, it takes as input the limb’s current shape and a target shape, solving for the required joint motions to get to the desired shape. We have developed a configurable solver on an FPGA, in hopes of speeding up solutions when compared to running the same algorithm on a regular CPU.