Challenges for Workspace Analysis of Manipulators

A survey of the analysis of the workspace of manipulators is presented with the aim of outlining fundamental characteristics still of current interest and source of research, also referring to the direct experiences of the author. The topic, which began with the advent of industrial robotics in the early 1970s, received a period of great attention both at practical and research levels in the following two decades in order to determine analysis procedures for design algorithms for robotic manipulators with serial kinematic architecture. In the last two decades, interest diminished, although research activities have made the manipulator workspace useful for functional characterization and design of parallel manipulators with problems and open issues.