A New Computer-Aided Approach to Support Designers in Conceptual Design of Complex Mechatronic Products
Year: 2009
Editor: Norell Bergendahl, M.; Grimheden, M.; Leifer, L.; Skogstad, P.; Lindemann, U.
Author: Albers, Albert; Enkler, Hans-Georg; Frietsch, Markus; Sauter, Christian
Series: ICED
Section: Product and Systems Design
Page(s): 25-34
Abstract
As in every new development of complex mechatronic systems designers have to face several challenges. Especially in system design and conceptual design activities designers often resort to already existing components that are combined and arranged into a new system which has to fulfill a predefined set of requirements. Regarding the humanoid robot ARMAR III of the Collaborative Research Center 588, these components are - amongst others - joints, motors, gears and sensors. Since there is a huge number of catalogues of different manufacturers, especially in multi domain systems, one big challenge is to find an optimal configuration. Furthermore designers have to deal with requirements and constraints that are changing during the development process. This article introduces a new approach to support designers in this task by means of a computer aided approach. General goal is a (semi-)automatic generation of compatible conceptual design proposals that meet the predefined requirements.
Keywords: product development, mechatronics, configuration, conceptual design, optimization