EXPERT SYSTEMS APPROACH TO TYPE SYNTHESIS OF MECHANISMS.

In the early stages of mechanism design, the engineer must decide upon the type of mechanism that will best perform a specific task. By separating the mechanism's structure from its function and implementing concepts from artificial intelligence, combinatorics, and man-machine interface design, the computer can aid in choosing the best type of mechanism for his or her task. We describe here the strategies used for applying these techniques in a new expert system TYSES (TYpe Synthesis Expert System). This paper introduces expert systems, describes the steps of type synthesis, and shows how these steps were implemented into this prototype expert system. The result is a rule-based system for computer-aided type synthesis. The computer starts with a certain base of knowledge about type synthesis. It then acquires new rules by an interactive, English-like dialogue with the designer, thereby allowing the system to search for good designs. This provides an efficient tool for synthesizing mechanisms.