Inspiration is useful for exploration and discovery of new solution
spaces. Systems in natural and artificial worlds and their functionality
are seen as rich sources of inspiration for idea generation. However,
unlike in the artificial domain where existing systems are often used for
inspiration, those from the natural domain are rarely used in a systematic
way for this purpose. Analogy is long regarded as a powerful means for
inspiring novel idea generation. One aim of the work reported here is to
initiate similar work in the area of systematic biomimetics for product
development, so that inspiration from both natural and artificial worlds
can be used systematically to help develop novel, analogical ideas for
solving design problems. A generic model for representing causality of
natural and artificial systems has been developed, and used to structure
information in a database of systems from both the domains. These are
implemented in a piece of software for automated analogical search of
relevant ideas from the databases to solve a given problem. Preliminary
experiments at validating the software indicate substantial potential for
the approach.
One of the hallmarks of engineering design is the design synthesis phase where the creativity of the designer most prominently comes into play as solutions are generated to meet underlying needs. Over the past decades, methodologies for generating concepts and design solutions have matured to the point that computation-based synthesis provides a means to explore a wider variety of solutions and take over more tedious design tasks. This paper reviews advances in function-based, grammar-based, and analogy-based synthesis approaches and their contributions to computational design synthesis research in the last decade.
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