Singularity analysis of spatial single-DOF mechanisms based on the locations of the instantaneous screw axes

Abstract

The instantaneous kinematics of a mechanism can be fully described through the instantaneous screw axes (ISAs) associated to the relative motions between mechanism's links. Characterizing the instantaneous kinematics of a mechanism includes its singularity analysis, which is the identification of mechanism configurations (singularities) where the instantaneous degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) of the mechanism “somehow” change. In single-DOF mechanisms with time-independent either holonomic or first-order non-holonomic constraints, the locations of the instantaneous screw axes only depend on the mechanism configuration. This property is fully exploited in planar single-DOF mechanisms where all the singularity conditions have been associated to the coincidence of particular instant centers (ICs), thus making the singularity identification possible with a simple analysis of the mechanism configuration. Differently, for single-DOF spatial mechanisms, the geometric conditions on ISAs that identify a singular configuration have not been enunciated for the general case, yet. This paper fills this lack by providing the explicit expressions of all the possible instantaneous input-output relationships, the exhaustive enumeration of the geometric conditions on the ISAs that identify singular configurations and a geometric and analytic technique for the singularity analysis of spatial single-DOF mechanisms, which is the natural extension of the IC-based ones conceived for planar single-DOF mechanisms.