Front. Mech. Eng. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11465-018-0511-0 REVIEW ARTICLE Runhua TAN, Wei LIU, Guozhong CAO, Yuan SHI Creative design inspired by biological knowledge: Technologies and methods © The Author(s) 2018. This article is published with open access at link.springer.com and journal.hep.com.cn Abstract Biological knowledge is becoming an impor- humans are facing severe threats to their survival, e.g., tant source of inspiration for developing creative solutions shortage in resources and serious environmental pollution. to engineering design problems and even has a huge Biological wisdom is a key component of human potential in formulating ideas that can help firms compete sustainable development that has attracted an increasing successfully in a dynamic market. To identify the amount of research attention. Previous studies have technologies and methods that can facilitate the develop- attempted to develop biologically inspired innovative ment of biologically inspired creative designs, this research solutions, and biological wisdom has subsequently become briefly reviews the existing biological-knowledge-based an important branch in the field of design methodology. theories and methods and examines the application of With the emergence of advanced technologies such as biological-knowledge-inspired designs in various fields. electric microscopes and sophisticated gene engineering Afterward, this research thoroughly examines the four methods, scientists can easily observe and uncover dimensions of key technologies that underlie the biologi- principles from biological phenomena that can encourage cally inspired design (BID) process. This research then biologically inspired innovations. discusses the future development trends of the BID process The notion of bionics was introduced in the 1960s [3] before presenting the conclusions. and has since then become an independent discipline. After half a century of development, various terminologies and Keywords creative design, biologically inspired methodologies have emerged to guide designers in methods, key technologies applying biological knowledge efficiently in engineering design. These methodologies involve various types of knowledge from different abstraction layers, namely, 1 Introduction strategy, behavior, physiology, and morphology [4]. These types of knowledge function as prototypes and Innovation is becoming a significant attribute that helps wisdoms that inspire the development of artificial products firms develop and survive in the market amid a fierce that aim not only to fulfill design requirements but also to competition [1]. Biology functions as a main source of achieve goals in energy saving and sustainable develop- human inspiration and has even played a significant role in ment [5]. These design solutions can be found especially in the development of early human inventions that can be the domains of energy saving [6] and artificial intelligence traced back to a thousand years ago [2]. Nowadays, [7]. Biologically inspired methods come in various forms yet are built on the same purpose, that is, to explore the Received September 1, 2017; accepted November 28, 2017 potential application of biological knowledge in engineer- ing design. On the one hand, these methods help Runhua TAN (✉), Wei LIU, Guozhong CAO engineering users choose the most appropriate way of School of Mechanical Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, finding the best solutions to their design problems. On the Tianjin 300401, China; National Engineering Research Center for Technological Innovation Method and Tool, Hebei University of other hand, a global review of biologically inspired Technology, Tianjin 300401, China products can help researchers gain an overall vision of E-mail: [email protected] the topics relevant to the field and locate opportunities for launching new developments in unexplored regions. Yuan SHI Department of Mechanical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan This paper is organized as follows. First, the relevant 20156, Italy terminologies and methodologies for biologically inspired 2 Front. Mech. Eng. design (BID) are presented in Section 2. The implementa- subdivided. Specifically, construction biomimetics can be tion of various aspects of biologically inspired innovations subdivided into biomimetics on materials, substances, is summarized in Section 3. The key technologies that prosthodontics, and robotics; processing biomimetics can support biologically inspired product innovation are sorted be subdivided into biomimetics on energy, architecture and investigated in depth in Section 4. The future sensors, and kinematics; and information biomimetics can development of BID is discussed in Section 5. The be subdivided into neuron-bionics, evolutionary bionics, concluding remarks are presented in Section 6. process bionics, and organizational bionics [13]. Compared with biomimetics, biomimicry focuses more on the sustainable wisdoms inspired by biological know- 2 Terminologies and frameworks ledge [14]. Biomimicry can be divided into the organ or tissue, behavioral, and ecosystem levels, and each of these Biological knowledge has a huge potential to inspire levels can be further subdivided into the pattern, material, designers in finding creative solutions to their design structure, process, and function dimensions [15]. Figure 1 problems. A systemic and creative BID method aims not shows the hierarchies of biomimetics and biomimicry to only to extract innovative wisdoms from biological clearly distinguish these concepts. prototypes but also to integrate these wisdoms into various Both biomimetics and biomimicry inherit and expand technological domains to create a new product or system. the notion of bionics as well as manifest the importance of The following part summarizes the currently popular learning and imitating biology to engineering design. More terminologies as well as their frameworks and main importantly, these ideas have significantly expanded the characteristics. area in which biological knowledge can be used to inspire innovation. 2.1 Biomimetics and biomimicry 2.2 Framework of biologically inspired design Biomimetics and biomimicry are both perceived to be synonymous to bionics [8]. Proposed by Schmit [9], BID uses the analogies of biological systems to develop biomimetics refers to the imitation of biology to produce solutions to engineering and design problems [6]. BID can creative solutions based on the analogy of biological obviously improve the sustainability of the design results phenomenon [10]. This notion is not limited to natural [16] and inspire breakthrough innovation ideas [17] that imitation and has been expanded to include creative can be further developed into new patents [18]. As its most processes that are driven by biological observations notable characteristic, BID allows for a cross-domain [11,12]. Biomimetics can be mainly divided into construc- knowledge mapping to bridge the differences among tion biomimetics, processing biomimetics, and information several disciplines. The design results inspired by BID are biomimetics, and each of these subsets can be further not merely biological imitations but are relatively complete Fig. 1 Hierarchies of biomimetics and biomimicry Runhua TAN et al. Creative design inspired by biological knowledge: Technologies and methods 3 at the systematic level and can fulfill multiple function prototypes and defines their required attributes. In Stage 5, requirements even though the materials and substances the algorithm arranges the parameters that are relevant to used in BID to implement functions significantly differ the main function. In Stage 6, the algorithm finds a from the engineering design [6]. combination of affordable parameters for a biomimetics The BID framework is formulated by three elements, device. BioTRIZ also has four design axioms, namely, namely, the biological representing methods that standar- axiom of simplification, axiom of interpretation, axiom of dize biological knowledge as engineering-user-friendly ideal result, and axiom of contradiction [24], which are forms, a database with a large amount of biological cases usually applied in conjunction with the algorithm. that serves as a source of inspiration for BID (e.g., BioTRIZ attempts to reveal and use biological wisdoms Asknature [19], an open web-based biological knowledge on a higher abstraction level compared with biomimetics, pool with around 1500 biological prototypes classified by biomimicry, and BID. This method expands the scope of function), and a design workflow that is expressed in a TRIZ by proposing a series of design axioms and step-by-step form to facilitate a highly efficient BID algorithms. design. Built on the same purposes of biomimetics and 2.4 Theory of biological coupling biomimicry, BID also embodies the idea that a design is inspired by biology. However, BID goes much deeper than Based on long-term practices in bionics, researchers have both biomimetics and biomimicry by investigating the proposed the notion of biological coupling to reveal the underlying mechanisms and presenting a systemic work- nature of a biological function. This notion defines flow that is formulated by various methods, tools, and biological function as a result of the organic combination processes for practical use even in complex design tasks. of several mutual interdependent factors through a special coupling mechanism [25–27], which also serves as the 2.3 BioTRIZ foundation that makes a biological function work [28]. Based on the idea of