Improving Cross-Disciplinary Knowledge Transfer for Bio-Inspired Engineering Design

Area of Science:

• Engineering and Biological Sciences
• Interdisciplinary Studies
• Innovation and Design

Background:

• Bio-inspired design drives innovation by leveraging evolutionary advancements for sustainable solutions.
• Translating biological insights into engineering presents challenges due to disciplinary differences in concepts and interpretation.
• A significant hurdle is the "language and representation gap" between biology and engineering.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the cognitive and technical skills needed for effective bio-inspired design.
• To identify key aspects of biological representation that facilitate adaptation into engineering design.
• To foster the development of more impactful and efficient bio-inspired solutions by bridging disciplinary divides.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of student feedback on biological information resources.
• Evaluation of ideation outputs from engineering design tasks.
• Comparative assessment of different levels of technical complexity in biological texts.

Main Results:

• Engineers preferred biology texts with medium technical complexity, balancing comprehension with visual aids.
• Basic references facilitated broad idea generation.
• More technical texts were crucial for in-depth understanding and application of biological insights to engineering problems.

Conclusions:

• Tailoring biological information complexity and presentation is vital for successful bio-inspired design.
• Addressing the "language and representation gap" enhances the translation of biological principles into engineering solutions.
• Future research should investigate information presentation, expert roles, and machine learning for optimized bio-inspired design processes.