Bio mimicry is where engineers are inspired by nature and create inventions that can be used to advance human technology. The Bio mimicry Challenge project had students use their inspirations from nature to help provide solutions to ongoing problems in the 21st century. My team and I created a miniature composting bin that could be used in small residential areas. The important content I learn about this project is understanding what is composting bin and how it works. Essentially the purpose of the composting bin is to provide nutrients for plants and is a storage for organic waste that could be reuse again.
Below is our Design Overview and Biological Inspiration for our product model
Design Questions
How might we make composting more accessible to people?
How might we make repurposing waste more “available” in various types of housing?
How might we improve composting methods to make it more accessible in urban housing?
Overall Thoughts
In the Bio mimicry Challenge project, there is one significant experience that stood out to me would be the different phrases we went through for our design. An example of this would be the first draft of our bio mimicry project.
Originally we thought of our design incorporating several elements from the Australian bird Mallee Fowl nest. The Mallee Fowl nest is an interesting concept because it is basically a sand mound covered with dead leaves and sand to kept the nest warm. The parent does not need to mandate its time to keep the nest warm all day, which is another useful way to conserve energy and heat. Our inspiration of the design included the structure of the fowl nest and a removable lid that can take out dead decomposing materials. Another function that the fowl would used if the mound got too hot, the bird would remove some of the sand to cool the nest down. However, later in our design process we left the idea of the Mallee Fowl nest. Instead for our final design we took inspired functions from ant mounds, parrot fish and other different organisms. Despite my enjoyment with the project there were some obstacles my group and I faced in the project. This was creating a final design and finding biological inspiration for our design. For the final product creation we as a group had to find a design inspired by nature, but can incorporate materials that are household friendly. For example, we decided that our bin be made out of stainless steel because it can be easily cleaned. The biological inspiration was hard because we learned how organisms evolved in a certain way to solve their problem, but taking that solution that mimicked our design, which is relevant and can work well is difficult. Yet, we push through and we were able to incorporate natural solutions to our product. So our project struck me with awed because I understand it can be so difficult for engineer to incorporate nature design systems that can be prevalent and important to our current technology. This help me understand how much grit these engineers and confidence for an efficient progress for the human race. Hopefully, we humans kept continuing to take nature design concepts and applied it to our twenty first century technology.