FAMING - SUPPORTING INNOVATIVE MECHANISM SHAPE DESIGN

A popular saying claims that 'innovation is 1% inspiration and 99% per spiration'. In this paper, we present a method for automating most of the perspiration involved in innovative design. We restrict our attent ion to innovative design processes which can be structured into three steps: discovery of a new technique, understanding it, and generalisin g it to fit the problem at hand. The method we developed automates the understanding and generalisation phases which involve most of the per spiration. 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 oth er domains with similar characteristics, in particular any problem whe re geometry plays an important role.