Author:

Keywords:

CIB_DESIGN, Science & Technology, Technology, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications, Engineering, Multidisciplinary, Engineering, Manufacturing, Computer Science, Engineering, Bioinspired Design, Biomimicry, Creativity and Ideation, 0910 Manufacturing Engineering, 0915 Interdisciplinary Engineering, 1203 Design Practice and Management, Design Practice & Management, 4010 Engineering practice and education, 4602 Artificial intelligence

Abstract:

This paper presents a bioinspiration approach that is able to scalably leverage the ever-growing body of biological information in natural-language format. The ideation tool AskNature, developed by the Biomimicry 3.8 Institute, is expanded with an algorithm for automated classification of biological strategies into the Biomimicry Taxonomy, a three-level, hierarchical information structure that organizes AskNature's database. In this way, the manual work entailed by the classification of biological strategies can be alleviated. Thus, the bottleneck is removed that currently prevents the integration of large numbers of biological strategies. To demonstrate the feasibility of building a scalable bioideation system, this paper presents tests that classify biological strategies from AskNature's reference database for those Biomimicry Taxonomy classes that currently hold sufficient reference documents.