Browsing by Author "Stone, R. B."

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    Automated Retrieval of Non-Engineering Domain Solutions to Engineering Problems
    (Cranfield University Press, 2009-03-31) Stroble, J. K.; Stone, R. B.; McAdams, D. A.; Goeke, M. S.; Watkins, S. E.; Rajkumar Roy; Essam Shehab
    Biological inspiration for engineering design has occurred through a variety of techniques such as creation and use of databases, keyword searches of biological information in natural-language format, prior knowledge of biology, and chance observations of nature. This research focuses on utilizing the reconciled Functional Basis function and flow terms to identify suitable biological inspiration for function based design. The organized search provides two levels of results: (1) associated with verb function only and (2) narrowed results associated with verb-noun (function-flow). A set of heuristics has been complied to promote efficient searching using this technique. An example for creating smart flooring is also presented and discussed.
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    An Engineering-to-Biology Thesaurus To Promote Better Collaboration, Creativity and Discovery
    (Cranfield University Press, 2009-03-31) Stroble, J. K.; Stone, R. B.; McAdams, D. A.; Watkins, S. E.; Rajkumar Roy; Essam Shehab
    Biological inspiration for engineering design has occurred through a variety of techniques such as database searches, keyword and antonym searches, knowledge of biology, observations of nature and other “aha” moments. This research aims to alleviate the knowledge gap problem by providing a link between engineering and biology with a thesaurus. The biologically connotative terms that comprise the thesaurus were collected utilizing an organized verb-noun search; collocated words were extracted from texts based on a functional search word. This thesaurus should enable the engineering and biology communities to better collaborate, create and discover.