Singular Configurations of Mechanisms and Manipulators

The book introduces the main problems, key methods, and milestone results in singularity analysis of mechanisms. It provides a comprehensive and concise overview of basic results while also addressing a few advanced topics of singularities in mechanical systems and robots.

​Andreas Müller obtained a Ph.D. in Mechatronics in 2004 from the Technical UniversityChemnitz, Germany. In 2011 he obtained a habilitation from the University Duisburg-Essen, Germany. He has been member of technical committees of more than 30 internationalconferences.He is working in the broad area of mechanism design with emphasize on kinematics anddynamics. His research interests are centered at mathematical methods for the analysis ofmechanisms, and the 'singularity problem' is a repeating topic within his research. Hecontributed to the advancement of methods for local analysis of critical configurations ofholonomic and non-holonomic mechanisms using the mathematical concept of Lie groups as a modern representative of classical screw theory. Beside developing algorithmic approaches his work is dedicated to the clarification and unification of terminology used in the context of　singularities. This research direction complements his work on robust algorithms for robotics and control, where singularities are critical.
Dimiter Zlatanov obtained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toronto. He is currently with the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica, Energetica at the University of　Genoa. His scientific work focusses on screw theory and all aspects of singularities.
Manfred Husty is Full Professor of Geometry. He works in Computational kinematics, Mathematical methods in robotics, Classical Geometry, Non-Euclidean Geometry, Differential Geometry since 1982. He is head of the unit Geometry and CAD and was Dean of Engineering of University Innsbruck from 2004 to 2008. He is member of the senate of the University Innsbruck since 2002 and was visiting professor at several international and national universities (TU Graz, TU Dresden, Technical University Lima and University Laval, Quebec) and is elected associate member of the Research Centre for Intelligent machines (CIM) at McGill University, Montreal, Canada and received an honorary doctorate from Technical University Cluj-Napoca. He published and edited 4 books and wrote more than 130 scientific papers (complete list: http: //geometrie.uibk.ac.at/cms/slabid-22.htm). His h-index in SCI is 10 with more than 470 citations and 23 in Google Scholar with more than 1600 citations. He has organized several international (ARK 1998, 2012, Eucomes 2006, Workshop on History of Mechanisms and Machines 2002, ISGG 2014) and numerous national conferences (Austrian Robotics Workshop, Geometrietagung Österreich Ungarn, Österreich Tschechien, etc.) as well as International Summer Schools on "Mathematical Methods of Robotics." He is editor in Chief of Informationsblätter der Geometrie, editorial board member of CSME Transactions (Canada).
Prof. Phillippe Wenger obtained a Ph.D. in Automatics and Robotics from the University ofNantes, France in 1989. In 1998, he obtained his Habilitation from the University of Nantes, France. Prof. Wenger has been a member of the scienti fic committees of more than 20international conferences since 1994. Since 2011 he is the head of the robotics team at IRCCyN.
Oriol Bohigas received the double M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain, and in Aeronautical Engineering from the Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace (ISAE), France, in 2006. After a research internship at Airbus France, he worked for two years as a space engineer at the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). He recently obtained his Ph.D. degree (with honors) with the Kinematics and Robot Design group of the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (IRI, CSIC-UPC). His current research interests include workspace and singularity analysis of robot mechanisms.