FAMING: Supporting innovative mechanism shape design

A popular saying claims that 'innovation is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration'. In this paper, we present a method for automating most of the perspiration involved in innovative design. We restrict our attention to innovative design processes which can be structured into three steps: discovery of a new technique, understanding it, and generalising it to fit the problem at hand. The method we developed automates the understanding and generalisation phases which involve most of the perspiration. We present the FAMING system which demonstrates the method for the design of part shapes in 2D elementary mechanisms, also called kinematic pairs. We believe that the results are generalisable to other domains with similar characteristics, in particular any problem where geometry plays an important role.