In robotics, pose errors are known as positional and rotational errors of a given mechanical system. Those errors are commonly produced by the so-called joint clearances, which are the play between pairing elements. Predicting pose errors can be done via the formulation of two optimization models holding continuous domains, which belong to the NP-Hard class of problems. In this paper, we focus on the use of constraint programming in order to provide rigorous and reliable solution to this problem. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.