Bio-inspired design process

Biology as a model and inventions

Nature has an enormous pool of inventions that passed the harsh test of practicality and durability in a changing environment. To harness the most from nature’s capabilities, it is critical to bridge between biology and engineering and see the cooperation of experts from both fields. This bridging effort can help turn nature’s capabilities into engineering capabilities, tools and mechanisms. To approach nature in engineering terms, it is necessary to sort biological capabilities along technological categories. Namely, one can take biologically identified characteristics and seek an analogy in terms of engineering, as shown in the table.

Table 2. Characteristic similarities of biology and engineering systems

Characteristic similarities of biology and engineering systems
Biology	Engineering	Bioengineering, biomimetics, bionics and biomechanics
Body	System	System with multifunctional materials and structures are developed emulating the capability of biological systems
Skleton and bones	Structure and support struts	Support structures are part of every man-made system
Brain	Computer	Advances in computers are being made emulating the operation of the human brain
Intelligence	Artificial intelligence	There are numerous aspects of artificial intelligence that have been inspired by biology including augmented reality, autonomous systems, computational intelligence, expert systems, fuzzy logic, etc.
Senses	Sensors	Computer vision, artificial vision, radar, and other proximity detectors all have direct biological analogies. However, at their best, the capability of the man-made sensors is nowhere near as good as biosensors
Muscles	Actuators	Electroactive polymers are actuators with functional similarity to natural muscles
Electrochemical power generation	Rechargeable battries	The use of biological materials to produce power will offer mechanical systems enormous advantages.