Investigation of reconfiguration theory based on an assembly-circles artifact

The traditional Chinese artifacts are very popular to play with for their magic tricks and these transformations contain potential theory of mechanisms. The assembly-circles artifact is a metamorphic mechanism which can change its configuration and shape through the motion of joints. In this paper, the topology and configuration of the assembly-circles artifact is investigated by dividing the mechanism into 3 sections. The geometry property of this special mechanism is also studied. And further, three evaluating criterions for metamorphic mechanisms, which are linear ratio, area ratio and volume ratio, are proposed. The performance of this artifact is estimated by these criterions. Our research provides some fundamental ideas for the design of metamorphic mechanisms.