A cooperative approach for dimensional synthesis of mechanisms

In the present paper, we intend to propose special configurations of coupling between distributed agents, to achieve an optimal dimensional synthesis of a fourbar mechanism. As any conventional optimisation problem, this problem often fails in local minima because of its nine variables characterisation. A distribution of the study allows a cooperation between actors (reactive agents as optimisers and constraint agents, or cognitive agents as a designer) working at different goals, with different criteria. This cooperation leads to a global convergence for a given priority set (BON, 88), (FER, 95), (GAR, 94), (SIC, 92). Thus our solution is to propose a time-based priority that keeps the independence of the agents. No supervisor agent is introduced. Results show the existence of a set of configurations for the agent priorities, ensuring a good global convergence.