Synthesis of adjustable spherical four-link mechanisms for approximate multi-path generation

• Multiple desired coupler paths each prescribed by a large number of points
• Optimization based synthesis of adjustable spherical four-link mechanism
• Least square based plane fitting approach
• Efficient due to the lesser number of parameters in the search space
• Synthesis of driving mechanism for flapping wing micro air vehicle

An optimization based method is presented for the synthesis of adjustable spherical four-link crank–rocker mechanisms for approximate multi-path generation. The synthesis is done in two stages, first the driving dyad of the spherical mechanism is determined and then the remaining parameters are determined. The method uses a least squares based plane fitting procedure and this results in a lesser number of design variables for optimization than existing approaches. Two numerical examples, including one dealing with generating two different trajectories of a flapping wing micro air vehicle, are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed synthesis method.

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