Biology is recognized as an excellent source of analogies and stimuli for engineering design. Previous work focused on the systematic identification of relevant biological analogies by searching for instances of functional keywords in biological information in natural-language format. This past work revealed that engineering keywords could not always be used to identify the most relevant biological analogies as the vocabularies between biology and engineering are sufficiently distinct. Therefore, a retrieval algorithm was developed to identify potential biologically meaningful keywords that are more effective in searching biological text than corresponding engineering keywords. In our current work, we applied and refined the retrieval algorithm to translate functional terms of the functional basis into biologically meaningful keywords. The functional basis is widely accepted as a standardized representation of engineering product functionality. Therefore, our keywords could serve as a thesaurus for engineers to find biological analogies relevant to their design problems. We also describe specific semantic relationships that can be used to identify biologically meaningful keywords in excerpts describing biological phenomena. These semantic relations were applied as criteria to identify the most useful biologically meaningful keywords. Through a preliminary validation experiment, we observed that different translators were able to apply the criteria to identify biologically meaningful keywords with a high degree of agreement to those identified by the authors. In addition, we describe how fourth-year undergraduate mechanical engineering students used the biologically meaningful keywords to develop concepts for their design projects.
Skip Nav Destination
e-mail: cheong@mie.utoronto.ca
e-mail: chiu@mie.utoronto.ca
e-mail: shu@mie.utoronto.ca
e-mail: rob.stone@oregonstate.edu
e-mail: dmcadams@tamu.edu
Article navigation
February 2011
Research Papers
Biologically Meaningful Keywords for Functional Terms of the Functional Basis
H. Cheong,
H. Cheong
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering,
e-mail: cheong@mie.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
, 5 King’s College Road, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G8, Canada
Search for other works by this author on:
I. Chiu,
I. Chiu
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering,
e-mail: chiu@mie.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
, 5 King’s College Road, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G8, Canada
Search for other works by this author on:
L. H. Shu,
L. H. Shu
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering,
e-mail: shu@mie.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
, 5 King’s College Road, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G8, Canada
Search for other works by this author on:
R. B. Stone,
R. B. Stone
Design Engineering Laboratory,
e-mail: rob.stone@oregonstate.edu
Oregon State University
, 120 Dearborn Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331
Search for other works by this author on:
D. A. McAdams
D. A. McAdams
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
e-mail: dmcadams@tamu.edu
Texas A&M University
, 3123 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-3123
Search for other works by this author on:
H. Cheong
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering,
University of Toronto
, 5 King’s College Road, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G8, Canadae-mail: cheong@mie.utoronto.ca
I. Chiu
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering,
University of Toronto
, 5 King’s College Road, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G8, Canadae-mail: chiu@mie.utoronto.ca
L. H. Shu
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering,
University of Toronto
, 5 King’s College Road, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G8, Canadae-mail: shu@mie.utoronto.ca
R. B. Stone
Design Engineering Laboratory,
Oregon State University
, 120 Dearborn Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331e-mail: rob.stone@oregonstate.edu
D. A. McAdams
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Texas A&M University
, 3123 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-3123e-mail: dmcadams@tamu.edu
J. Mech. Des. Feb 2011, 133(2): 021007 (11 pages)
Published Online: February 1, 2011
Article history
Received:
August 13, 2009
Revised:
December 6, 2010
Published:
February 1, 2011
Citation
Cheong, H., Chiu, I., Shu, L. H., Stone, R. B., and McAdams, D. A. (February 1, 2011). "Biologically Meaningful Keywords for Functional Terms of the Functional Basis." ASME. J. Mech. Des. February 2011; 133(2): 021007. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4003249
Download citation file:
Get Email Alerts
DeepJEB: 3D Deep Learning-Based Synthetic Jet Engine Bracket Dataset
J. Mech. Des (April 2025)
Design and Justice: A Scoping Review in Engineering Design
J. Mech. Des (May 2025)
Related Articles
A Method of Finding Biologically Inspired Guidelines for Environmentally Benign Design and Manufacturing
J. Mech. Des (November,2014)
Design of Machines With Compliant Bodies for Biomimetic Locomotion in Liquid Environments
J. Dyn. Sys., Meas., Control (March,2006)
Exploring the Use of Functional Models in Biomimetic Conceptual Design
J. Mech. Des (December,2008)
Design of a Bio-Inspired Spherical Four-Bar Mechanism for Flapping-Wing Micro Air-Vehicle Applications
J. Mechanisms Robotics (May,2010)
Related Proceedings Papers
Related Chapters
Breathing and Living Walls
Advanced Energy Efficient Building Envelope Systems
Agents for Bio-Inspired Systems
Intelligent Engineering Systems through Artificial Neural Networks Volume 18
IBC: Individual Based Choice
International Conference on Advanced Computer Theory and Engineering (ICACTE 2009)