Putting Biology into TRIZ: A Database of Biological Effects

Our goal is to make biological information available for engineers via a 'biological patents' database in TRIZ. However, biological functions need to be co-ordinated simultaneously at many levels of organization – from cell organelle to population to ecosystem. Each function has links with other functions on different organizational levels. To account for this, we made auxiliary 5D 'conflict' matrices for biological structures and environments, and for causes and limits of actions; these allow us to resolve data about organisms into engineering-like chunks of information and cover the primary TRIZ constituents of 'function', 'effect' and 'conflict'. In this way we can also provide a framework for the rationalization and quantification of bionics.