Research in bio-inspired design - what is its current focus?

Bio-inspired design is an increasingly popular creativity and innovation method. Using bio-inspired design, designers tap nature with its almost unlimited pool of inspirations for technical solutions. A challenge of bio-inspired design is finding promising biological systems and identifying analogies which can be transferred to solve a technical problem. For these challenges, the profound understanding of the biological system is necessary. This can require further research. To understand the current focus of bio-inspired design research, we analyse journal publications from 2015/16 and 2006. The analysis provides an overview of the biological systems and organization levels currently in focus. Moreover, we regard the technical products resulting from the bio-inspired designs. The results show designers which biological systems and organization levels have been researched for bio-inspired design so that knowledge on them can directly be used for further technical developments. The blank spots of research are identified which can provide unexplored biological inspirations.     «

Bio-inspired design is an increasingly popular creativity and innovation method. Using bio-inspired design, designers tap nature with its almost unlimited pool of inspirations for technical solutions. A challenge of bio-inspired design is finding promising biological systems and identifying analogies which can be transferred to solve a technical problem. For these challenges, the profound understanding of the biological system is necessary. This can require further research. To understand the cu...     »