Classification of the singularity loci of m-n fully-parallel manipulators

Abstract

Singularity analysis of fully-parallel manipulators (FPMs) produced a wide literature that tried to overcome the difficulty of algebraically calculating the determinant of general FPM’s Jacobian. An early work of this author addressed this problem by using Laplace expansion, and proposed an analytic expression of general FPM’s singularity locus which contains ten terms easy to compute and geometrically interpret. Such an expression is exploited here to classify the singularity loci of all the m-n FPM architectures.