Jason's Reflection

Engineering Biomimetics has definitely been an interesting module of learning whereby exposure is given in addressing the possibilities of acquiring inspirations from nature to develop sustainable and possibly commercial engineering design solutions that could meet the current challenges encountered in our daily lives. Engineering Biomimetics has given both classroom and out-of-classroom learning experiences of which includes a blog creation on the adoption of a plant or animal that could lead to fruitful inspiration of biomimicry in suggesting a novel industrial application.

Our adopted animal is the Chocolate Chip Starfish whereby the most interesting proposed biomimicry of the starfish would be the adhesive mechanism of the tube feet of the starfish to surfaces it comes in contact with whereby the starfish has the ability to adhere to the surfaces for a long period of time without faltering. The proposed novel industrial application based on this inspired biomimicry of the tube feet of the starfish is the creation of a bodysuit that targets for window-cleaning of high-rise buildings. The tube feet consist of a suction cup that provides the adhesive characteristic through the Seastar Footprint Protein 1 (SFP 1) which is responsible for adhesion to the surface and a meshwork deposited on this film for cohesion. The SFP 1 material is able to adhere strongly to glass or mica material, thus, the bodysuit would be coated with this material at strategic locations (i.e. the foot, knees, abdomen and between elbow and wrist). This novel bodysuit design is able to cater for high-rise buildings window cleaners whereby implementation of this bodysuit has a promising potential in reducing the risk and hassle of utilising harness and platforms and improves flexibility, safety, ease of use and parameters of reach.

In executing this animal adoption and blog creation, challenges encountered is inevitable, nevertheless, working in a team is able to resolve them and the segregated workloads among team members ensure all the tasks that needs to be done is on track. I was in-charged with care-taking of the starfish together with Eason (i.e. feeding, ensure a clean environment) before the mid-sem-break and was taken over by Stephanie after the mid-sem-break. On the blog creation, I was in-charged for the blog posts on anatomy, feeding mechanism, regeneration characteristics and reproduction of the starfish. This experience has been a fun, fruitful and eye-opening one for me and may ‘Starfish continues to light the way to Biomimicry!’.