Automated Retrieval of Non-Engineering Domain Solutions to Engineering Problems

摘要

Biological inspiration for engineering design has occurred through a variety of techniques such as creationand use of databases, keyword searches of biological information in natural-language format, priorknowledge of biology, and chance observations of nature. This research focuses on utilizing the reconciledFunctional Basis function and flow terms to identify suitable biological inspiration for function based design.The organized search provides two levels of results: (1) associated with verb function only and (2) narrowedresults associated with verb-noun (function-flow). A set of heuristics has been complied to promote efficientsearching using this technique. An example for creating smart flooring is also presented and discussed.