Biologically Inspired Design of Context-Aware Smart Products

Abstract

The rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and cyber–physical sys-tems (CPSs) has paved the way for the increasing popularity of smart products. Context-awareness isan important facet of product smartness. Unlike artifacts, various bio-systems are naturally characterizedby their extraordinary context-awareness. Biologically inspired design (BID) is one of the most commonlyemployed design strategies. However, few studies have examined the BID of context-aware smart prod-ucts to date. This paper presents a structured design framework to support the BID of context-awaresmart products. The meaning of context-awareness is defined from the perspective of product design.The framework is developed based on the theoretical foundations of the situated function–behavior–structure ontology. A structured design process is prescribed to leverage various biological inspirationsin order to support different conceptual design activities, such as problem formulation, structure refor-mulation, behavior reformulation, and function reformulation. Some existing design methods and emerg-ing design tools are incorporated into the framework. A case study is presented to showcase how thisframework can be followed to redesign a robot vacuum cleaner and make it more context-aware.Ó2019 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier LTD on behalf of Chinese Academy of Engineering andHigher Education Press Limited Company. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license