A desired movement command (203) for a robotic device (100) having n joints (112) operating in an m degrees of freedom task space is analyzed to determine if it would cause any of the joint angular limits to be violated. In the case where a non-zero number L (241) of the joints (112) have angular limits that are violated, a revised movement command (254) is then constructed using Jmod (251), which includes all columns in a Jacobian matrix J (211) except for those columns corresponding to L actively limited joints.