Automatic synthesis of kinematic structures of mechanisms and robots especially for those with complex structures

Structural synthesis of kinematic structures of mechanisms and robots is the first step in conceptual design. This paper proposes an automatic method for the structural synthesis of closed mechanisms and robots, even for those very complex structures seldom addressed till now. Loop theory based method is proposed to solve the problem of rigid sub-chain detection. The unique representation of graphs is obtained and used to detect isomorphism between kinematic chains. A human-machine interactive synthesis program is also developed, and the required kinematic structures of mechanisms and robots can be synthesized automatically. Some synthesis examples are given to show the efficiency and effectiveness of the method. The method is also helpful for automatic synthesizing other kinds of structures which can be represented by closed loop graphs, such as truss structures and molecular structures of organic substances. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.