Foreword to the Special Issue on the Computational Kinematics Conference, CK2017

Computational Kinematics is a wide field of science addressing applications ranging from robotics to mechanics, computer science, mathematics and computer graphics.

Robustness to algorithmic singularities and sensitivity in computational kinematics

A robust approach to computational kinematics intended to cope with algorithmic singularities is introduced in this article. The approach is based on the reduction of the original system of equations to a subsystem of bivariate equations, as opposed to the multivariate polynomial reduction leading to the characteristic univariate polynomial. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated for the exact function-generation synthesis of planar, spherical, and spatial four-bar linkages. Some numerical examples are provided for the case of the spherical four-bar function generator with six precision points to show the benefits of the proposed method with respect to methods reported in the literature.