A novel method for the singularity analysis of planar mechanisms with more than one degree of freedom

Singular configurations (singularities) are mechanism configurations where the instantaneous kinematics is locally undetermined. Since the indetermination of the instantaneous kinematics causes serious problems both to the static behavior and to the motion control of the mechanism, the research of all the singularities (singularity analysis) is a mandatory step during the design of mechanisms. This paper presents a new approach to implement the singularity analysis of planar mechanisms. The proposed technique extends the use of the instant center properties to the singularity analysis of planar mechanisms with more than one degree of freedom (dof). It exploits the results of previous works by the author in which a geometric and analytic technique has been presented to address the singularity analysis of single-dof planar mechanisms.