A Comparison of Mechanical Engineering and Biology Students’ Ideation and Bioinspired Design Abilities

Bioinspired design uses nature as a source of inspiration for creating solutions to engineering design problems. Nature evolves time-tested, efficient designs that may offer an innovative solution. However, it appears that one of the main obstacles to bioinspired design is the engineers’ lack of biological knowledge, which causes difficulty in identifying analogous natural systems for the design problems. In this paper, we compare the ability of senior engineering and biology undergraduates to use nature as inspiration for concept generation. The two groups’ solutions were analyzed for quantity of non-redundant ideas, quality, novelty, and variety of the solutions. The initial results indicate that there is not a statistically significant difference between the two groups. General trends are examined, and a qualitative study of the results is presented. The overall results suggest that biology coursework does not significantly aid students in identifying analogous biological systems or developing more creative solutions.

[1]  Ille C. Gebeshuber,et al.  An attempt to reveal synergies between biology and mechanical engineering , 2008 .

[2]  Karl T. Ulrich,et al.  Product Design and Development , 1995 .

[3]  Ernst A. van Nierop,et al.  How bumps on whale flippers delay stall: an aerodynamic model. , 2008, Physical review letters.

[4]  Steven M. Smith,et al.  Metrics for measuring ideation effectiveness , 2003 .

[5]  P. Johnson-Laird.  Analogy and the exercise of creativity , 1989 .

[6]  J. Fenn,et al.  A Conversation with , 2009 .

[7]  Daniel A. McAdams,et al.  Biologically Meaningful Keywords for Functional Terms of the Functional Basis , 2011 .

[8]  Yan Jin,et al.  Creative Stimulation in Conceptual Design , 2002 .

[9]  J. Vincent,et al.  Systematic technology transfer from biology to engineering , 2002, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[10]  J. Vincent,et al.  Biomimetics: its practice and theory , 2006, Journal of The Royal Society Interface.

[11]  A. Geim,et al.  Microfabricated adhesive mimicking gecko foot-hair , 2003, Nature materials.

[12]  G. S. Alʹtshuller,et al.  The Innovation Algorithm:TRIZ, systematic innovation and technical creativity , 1999 .

[13]  J. R. Landis,et al.  The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. , 1977, Biometrics.

[14]  Amaresh Chakrabarti,et al.  A functional representation for aiding biomimetic and artificial inspiration of new ideas , 2005, Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing.

[15]  Kristin L. Wood,et al.  Development of a Functional Basis for Design , 2000 .

[16]  Jonathan Cagan,et al.  A Study of Design Fixation, Its Mitigation and Perception in Engineering Design Faculty , 2010 .

[17]  L. H. Shu,et al.  Biologically inspired design , 2010, Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing.

[18]  Marc J. Weissburg,et al.  EDITORIAL: Perspectives on biologically inspired design: introduction to the collected contributions , 2007 .

[19]  Robert Stone,et al.  TRANSLATING TERMS OF THE FUNCTIONAL BASIS INTO BIOLOGICALLY MEANINGFUL KEYWORDS , 2008 .

[20]  R. Full,et al.  Evidence for van der Waals adhesion in gecko setae , 2002, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[21]  W. Barthlott,et al.  Purity of the sacred lotus, or escape from contamination in biological surfaces , 1997, Planta.

[22]  Carolyn Conner Seepersad,et al.  An Experimental Investigation of the Innovation Capabilities of Undergraduate Engineering Students , 2012 .

[23]  Jacquelyn K. S. Nagel,et al.  An Engineering-to-Biology Thesaurus for Engineering Design , 2010 .

[24]  R S Trask,et al.  Self-healing polymer composites: mimicking nature to enhance performance , 2007, Bioinspiration & biomimetics.

[25]  Ashok K. Goel,et al.  DANE: Fostering Creativity in and through Biologically Inspired Design , 2011 .

[26]  L.J. Leifer,et al.  Engineering design thinking, teaching, and learning , 2005, IEEE Engineering Management Review.

[27]  Ashok K. Goel,et al.  Biologically-Inspired Innovation in Engineering Design: a Cognitive Study , 2007 .

[28]  Barry I. Hyman.  Fundamentals of Engineering Design , 1997 .

[29]  K. Dunbar.  How scientists think: On-line creativity and conceptual change in science. , 1997 .

[30]  Julie S. Linsey,et al.  Evaluating the Directed Method for Bioinspired Design , 2012 .

[31]  Bo T. Christensen,et al.  The relationship of analogical distance to analogical function and preinventive structure: the case of engineering design , 2007, Memory & cognition.