Forward kinematics

Summary

Forward kinematics computes the position and orientation of the end of a robot arm or other serial mechanism from the values of its joint variables. It is a map from the joint space to the Euclidean group $SE(3)$ of rigid motions, obtained by multiplying one rigid motion per joint. It is explicit and easy to evaluate, in contrast to the inverse problem of finding joint values for a desired pose. Denavit–Hartenberg parameters are a standard way to write down the joint motions.