Title: Computer-Aided Biomimetics: Computational tools to support engineers during Biologically Inspired Design
Speaker: Ruben Kruiper, Heriot-Watt University
Date: 11:15 on 30 January 2017
Location: CM F.17, Heriot-Watt University
Abstract: Biologically inspired design concerns copying ideas from nature to various other domains, e.g. natural computing. Biomimetics is a sub-field of biologically inspired design and focuses specifically on solving technical/engineering problems. Because engineers lack biological knowledge the process of biomimetics is non-trivial and remains adventitious. Therefore, computational tools have been developed that aim to support engineers during a biomimetics process by integrating large amounts of relevant biological knowledge. Existing tools work apply NLP techniques on biological research papers to build dedicated knowledge bases. However, these existing tools impose an engineering view on biological data. I will talk about the support that ‘Computer-Aided Biomimetics’ tools should provide, introducing a theoretical basis for further research on the appropriate computational techniques.