Adding Biologically-Inspired Design Approaches to Engineered Systems

In this short vision paper, we examine some of the properties and advantages of biological systems composed of large numbers of diverse elements and processes. These characteristics enable graded behavior that leads to a wide range of adaptations, different strategies for coverage (both spatially and over different kinds of information), and the creation of layers and architectures for partitioning the massive numbers and diversity of participanting elements. We compare this biological style with that of two examples of current engineered systems having numbers of components approaching that of small biological systems: the camera focal plane of the Vera <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathbf{C}$</tex>. Rubin observatory and cutting-edge microelectronic chips. We then briefly introduce the conceptual design of two very simple example systems, one physical and one computational, that utilize some of these properties and demonstrate how a more biological design style might be applied to engineered systems.