Research on design of a planar hybrid actuator based on a hybrid algorithm

Hybrid actuators, which are a combination of two types of motor and mechanism, have good flexibility. In this paper, the kinematics analysis for a hybrid five-bar actuator is introduced. An optimization design of hybrid actuator is performed with reference to kinematics objective function. By the use of the properties of ergodicity, stochastic property, and "regularity" of chaos, a hybrid optimization algorithm is proposed based on chaos optimization algorithm (COA) and a gradient-based search. The efficiency of COA is much higher than some stochastic algorithms such as simulated anneal algorithm (SAA) and genetic algorithm (GA) when COA is used to a kind of continuous problems. The chaos optimization algorithm can improve the efficiency of searching in the whole field by gradually shrinking the area of optimization variable. The precision of optimum dimensions obtained by using the hybrid optimization method can be improved evidently. Finally, a numerical example is carried out, and the simulation results show that the optimization method is feasible and satisfactory in the design of hybrid actuator.