Bio-Inspired Design Systems

Creation of new product is what drives today's economic engine forward, shaping the world around us. Mass production of consumer products has become commonplace and more and more complex systems are being developed to meet increasing customer demands. At the centre of this drive sits the new cry for innovation in every avenue of design: innovation, improvement and change. This new buzz word has become a necessity within the world of design, with most companies today asking how they can become more innovative.
A key problem within the design of new products is the restraints placed upon it due to risk and cost of change. This leaves us with the glaring fact that innovation is usually a minor change to a current product rather than the new solution to a problem that is expected. As risk is sought to be avoided a reliable and consistent approach to design is taken, limiting innovation and prohibiting a major advantage of it: emergence.
A major help in today's world of engineering is the computer and computer aided engineering. However, as the human is still doing all the engineering thinking, it can become more of a computer-aided documentation process. The question must be asked why in today's age of artificial intelligence and machine learning we are still doing all the work. Surely we must be capable of manipulating the computer to help identify valid solutions to design problems.
"Man invented things by imposing shape on nature, man discovered things by revealing the pattern of nature" - Alan Fletcher. Looking at nature we can see how trees grow in response to stimuli, their size and shape not forced but rather following hereditary and physical rules to react to both its environment and internal requirements. Galileo said "Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe", anything we see in nature can be described using maths and therefore it should be feasible to replicate these reactions within a computer.
This PhD will run within a wider initiative "Biohaviour" and will seek to fulfil the following aims;
- Look at how nature can inspire design
- Theorise and capture the rules for growth within natural systems
- Apply these rules as engineering principles
- Study how these rules should respond to system environment and requirements
- Explore how these rules will interact within a multi-domain system
This PhD will be exploring how to create a design system which is both simple and reactive. An aim of simplicity may enable the design to interact within a multi-disciplinary system, removing the disparity of focusing on one problem only to change the design when considering the next. A reactive design will harness the much-avoided and yet much desired tool of emergence, allowing multiple design forms to be explored for the same problem.
"Biohaviour" and this PhD operates within a highly dynamic and industry focused research group which includes established academic staff, post-doctoral researchers and PhD students. Industrial collaborators are engaged throughout, providing real-world problems and test cases, giving the research focus and testable results.