An Evolutionary Approach to the Identification of Linkage Curves

Identification of an appropriate linkage curve is an important step in the application of linkage mechanisms. This paper applies a new identification method, evolutionary identification, to search tbr the curve based on the analogy of species evolution. In this method, features of general linkage curves are defined and represented as evolutionary factors, or “genes”. Then the evolutionary factors are operated through evolutionary computation. This method can automatically identity the curve with the maximum similarity and thus obtain the structural parameters of the curve from the atlas base of linkage curves. General principles are also given for the evolutionary identification approach as a new identification method. The proposed method has been coded and applied in real linkage design problems. Further research topics are also discussed.