Cuspidal Robots

Abstract: This chapter is dedicated to the so-called cuspidal robots, i.e. those robots that can move from one inverse geometric solution to another without meeting a singular confuguration. This feature was discovered quite recently and has then been fascinating a lot of researchers. After a brief history of cuspidal robots, the chapter provides the main features of cuspidal robots: explanation of the non-singular change of posture, uniqueness domains, regions of feasible paths, identification and classification of cuspidal robots. The chapter focuses on 3-R orthogonal serial robots. The case of 6-dof robots and parallel robots is discussed in the end of this chapter.