Computational Design of Mechanical Characters

Here's a good Siggraph 2013 demo about "Computational Design of Mechanical Characters" from Disney: ▶ this video

Is there a standard way to formally describe a mechanical machine? Similar to how a .obj file defines a 3d shape? Some standard way of describing piece types, interactions, properties, movement ranges, etc. Then one could have a computer use the format to learn/find interesting configurations based on a catalog like link especially if paired with simulation like done in this Disney research project using gears and linkages ▶ this video

This reminded me of a recent paper on automatically designing animated mechanical characters. Some of these movements could be used to incorporate different kinds of animations into these characters. ▶ this video