Franz Reuleaux: Franz Reuleaux (30 September 1829 -20 August 1905) was a lecturer of the Berlin Royal Technical Academy where he was later appointed as the President. He was often referred as the “father of kinematics”. After becoming a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Zurich, he became Rector at Königs Technischen Hochschule Berlin – Charlottenburg. Despite his involvement in German politics he became widely-known as an engineer-scientist, professor and industrial consultant, education reformer and leader of technical elite of Germany. He was also a member of Royal Swiss Acedemy of Sciences. Reuleaux relied deeply on the concept of kinematic chain which could be abstracted in kinematic pairs- chains of elementary links. Constraints on each kinematic pairs can lead to constraints on whole machine. He is best remembered for Reuleaux triangle and the development of compact symbolic notion to describe the topology of very wide variety of mechanisms.
Please refer to http://wiki.ros.org/reuleaux for detailed description and instructions.