Recently, research in robot kinematics has attracted researchers with different theoretical profiles and backgrounds, such as mechanical and electrica! engineering, computer science, and mathematics. It includes topics and problems that are typical for this area and cannot easily be met elsewhere. As a result, a specialised scientific community has developed concentrating its interest in a broad class of problems in this area and representing a conglomeration of disciplines including mechanics, theory of systems, algebra, and others. Usually, kinematics is referred to as the branch of mechanics which treats motion of a body without regard to the forces and moments that cause it. In robotics, kinematics studies the motion of robots for programming, control and design purposes. It deals with the spatial positions, orientations, velocities and accelerations of the robotic mechanisms and objects to be manipulated in a robot workspace. The objective is to find the most effective mathematical forms for mapping between various types of coordinate systems, methods to minimise the numerical complexity of algorithms for real-time control schemes, and to discover and visualise analytical tools for understanding and evaluation of motion properties ofvarious mechanisms used in a robotic system.
