Simulation of Developmental Process of Organism and Application to Structural Design

Abstract

In the early processes of design called conceptual and preliminary design, diverse design ideas must be obtained under the constraint of unclear design conditions. Since ancient times, designers have been referred to form and structure of natural organism to create new artifacts. Design method referencing organisms could develop new designs and improve design capabilities. This paper describes a design system referencing emergent organism evolution, diversity, and environmental adaptation to obtain diverse design solutions. We simulate developmental process of organism, "induction" and "apical dominance" for diverse organism morphogenesis and propose form-generation system for obtaining diverse design solutions in a self-organizing manner using cellular automata. Generated organisms are adapted to the environment. We add a process in which forms are structurally adapted, optimizing diverse design ideas. To verify effectiveness proposal, we apply our proposal to the structural design of chairs. We discuss the effectiveness of our proposal applying organism morphogenesis for obtaining diverse design solutions.