Singularity Set Computation: A Hands-On Session with the CUIK Suite

This chapter provides an introduction to the analysis of the singularities of robot mechanisms using the CUIK suite software. The CUIK suite is an open-source toolbox for motion analysis of general closed-chain mechanisms, resulting from several years of research and development within the Kinematics and robot design group at the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial. It is available under GPLv3 license from the CUIK Project home page. The intention is not to provide thorough definitions or developments, but to illustrate the basic concepts around singularity analysis through a short and simple presentation. The text assumes basic knowledge of the kinematics of robot mechanisms, such as the notions of configuration space, or the forward and inverse kinematics problems. An exhaustive description of the methods, algorithms, and the underlying mathematical concepts used by the CUIK suite can be found in Bohigas et al. (2016). For a better understanding, we do strongly recommend to install the CUIK suite and execute the examples provided while reading this chapter.