I-Corps: Information Services for Biologically Inspired Design

从自然中汲取灵感来解决设计问题，有可能在几乎所有可以想象的设计和创新领域取得重大进展。因此，越来越多的设计师对生物启发设计（BID）的实践感兴趣。然而，这一运动的采用和发展受到大多数设计师都是生物学新手这一事实的限制。这导致了两个主要问题：(i)对与设计问题相关的生物类似物的缓慢、乏味的搜索，以及（ii）对生物系统的缓慢、不准确和不精确的理解。因此，需要(a)提供从设计角度获取生物学知识的信息系统，以及(b)支持在概念设计中进行生物学类比过程的交互式工具。在过去的几年里，研究人员开发了一套工具，围绕着一种方法来语义表示、索引、检索、评估和传递与设计问题相关的生物信息。这种方法可以形成为BID专业人员提供一系列信息服务的基础，并有助于该运动的发展。BID不仅提供创新的解决方案，还可以帮助推动可持续设计的趋势。由于自然不会采用人类生产技术通常采用的“加热、加热、处理”方法，模仿生物系统的创新促进了可持续设计。因此，从长远来看，研究人员相信这个项目可以帮助在可持续设计方面取得可衡量的进展。BID的实践越来越广泛，包括生物技术、机器人技术、纳米技术、合成生物学等新兴学科。因此，研究人员期望这些信息服务能够潜在地加速所有这些学科中新兴技术的发展。

Taking inspiration from nature to solve design problems has the potential to lead to major advances in almost every conceivable sphere of design and innovation. Thus, there is a growing global movement of designers interested in the practice of biologically inspired design (BID). However, the adoption and growth of the movement is limited by the fact that most designers are novices in biology. This causes two major issues: (i) slow, tedious search for biological analogues relevant to design problems, and (ii) slow, inaccurate and imprecise understanding of biological systems. Thus, there is a need for (a) information systems that provide access to biological knowledge from a design perspective, and (b) interactive tools that support the process of making biological analogies in conceptual design. Over the last several years, researchers have developed a suite of tools centered around an approach to semantically representing, indexing, retrieving, assessing, and delivering biological information relevant to design problems. This approach can form the basis for providing a range of information services to BID professionals and contribute to the growth of the movement. BID not only offers innovative solutions, but it can also help drive trends in sustainable design. Since nature does not take the "heat, beat, and treat" approach often taken by human produced technologies, innovation that mimics biological systems fosters sustainable design. Thus, in the long term, researchers believe that this project can help lead to measurable progress in sustainable design. The practice of BID is becoming widespread, encompassing emerging disciplines like biotechnology, robotics, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, etc. Thus, researchers expect that these information services can potentially accelerate the growth of emerging technologies in all these disciplines.