The purpose of this school is to introduce key methods, milestone results, and main problems involving singularities of mechanisms and robotic manipulators. The 4th edition of the school will be celebrated in Nantes, following the three successful editions in Udine (2014) and Linz (2017 and 2019).

 The lectures will provide a wide overview of cutting-edge work around the following topics:

  • Definition of singularity. Singularity types.
  • Mathematical characterization of singularities.
  • Local and global topology of the singularity set and configuration space.
  • Symbolic and numerical tools for singularity set computation.
  • Methods to compute singularity-avoiding motions.
  • Applications to illustrative robots and mechanisms.

The school will offer a good balance of theory and practice. The attendees will be introduced to the mathematical theory needed to cope with singularities, but also to the software tools to compute and visualize them.

As this field of research is rapidly progressing these topics are updated and complemented as appropriate.
Attendees will be awarded with 1.5 ECTS credits for this course.

Colors indicate the number of inverse kinematics solutions of a manipulator with curved links (CUMA).
Colors indicate the number of inverse kinematics solutions of a manipulator with curved links (CUMA), whereby inaccurate results of the computation become visible.
Singularity surface of a 3-UPU operation mode.
Colors indicate the number of inverse kinematics solutions of a manipulator with curved links (CUMA).
Colors indicate the number of inverse kinematics solutions of a manipulator with curved links (CUMA).Courtesy of Mathias Brandstötter.