Math & Kinematics

Kinematics

Kinematics is the study of motion, position, velocity, and acceleration, without regard to the forces that cause it. Robot kinematics encompasses forward kinematics, mapping joint values to end-effector pose; inverse kinematics, the reverse problem; and differential kinematics, relating joint and task-space velocities through the Jacobian, with conventions like Denavit-Hartenberg parameters standardizing the modeling.

Why it matters for physical AI

Kinematic models are the shared geometric language between planners, controllers, simulators, and learned policies; their accuracy bounds calibration quality and every downstream precision claim.