Conclusion

Time flies, we have came to the last post without realising it. After observing my adopted pet for months and read through bunch of information about houseflies, I’m impressed by this tiny creature, the creature that I hated before this project. I never know so many innovations are inspired by this little thing as what I mentioned in literature review. I believe more noble inventions can be made if people are paying more attention to this so called 'nasty' creature. Do you inspired after reading the posts? I hope you do. Or if you don't, I hope you enjoy my writing and change your thinking about houseflies.

Individual refelction

1. What was the most interesting proposed used of biomimicry that was developed in blog? Why?

The cleaning tool is an interesting proposed in this blog. As we all know, biomimicry is meant to utilise nature's behaviours or patterns to solve humans' problems and this cleaning tool is an idea extracted from houseflies. This innovation can help to ease human's life by cleaning up the dirty area within a shorter time compared to human's hands. It also can reduce the accident rate by replacing the workers who risk their lives to clean up the window or the wall outside the buildings. In addition, the more important point here is that this multipurpose tool is an improvement of the marketed Winbot (window cleaning robot). It can clean not only window but other surfaces as well such as wall, ceiling, roof top and etc. This makes it interesting and worth to be invested.

2. Do you think that your design is patentable? Is it unique enough to be approved?

Yes. In the present market, there is no such a cleaning tool that is able to clean window, wall, ceiling and ect. at the same time. Therefore, it is patentable. The multi-function of this tool makes it unique enough to be approved.

3. Did you think that working as a team made this project easier or harder? Why?

Working as a team can make this project easier definitely. But, it can be harder too. If the team members are the kind of person that always doing the last-minute-works or always absent from the group meeting, you will find it difficult to work with them. However, if your team members are responsible individuals, a better idea or innovation can be proposed from the contribution of each different brain. This is what we called brainstorming. Unfortunately, I got to work this project by myself as I'm from different batch with my biomimetic classmates, we have difficulties to coordinate the time as we have different timetable. 

Industry application

As mentioned in the previous posts, houseflies use labellum to consume the food by capillary action and the claws or small hairs on their feet allow them to stick on the wall. You know what? We can combined these two features to invent a useful product. There is a potential that an efficient and environmental friendly multipurpose cleaning tool can be produced, by mimicking unique digestive pattern of houseflies and the ability to crawl on the wall. This idea is an improvement of the window cleaning robot (Winbot) that already marketed. The Winbot is used to clean window but the that idea I proposed here is a multipurpose tool that can clean any surfaces.

The cleaning tool can make use the way that flies suck up their food to capture/clean up dirt. We can even make use the capillary action to clean up liquid on the floor instead of electricity. Besides, the tool can 'climb' and clean the wall or ceiling easily by mimicking the feet feature of flies. This will be a great biomimetic product as this multipurpose cleaning tool can help people to clean some unreachable areas such as roof top, ceiling, wall and window of building. Therefore, it can help to save time and energy!

As we know, the window cleaner is one of the most dangerous job in the world. The workers risk their life to keep the building clean and clear. This tool can replace the worker to clean the window of the skyscrapers with shorter time and lesser risk. Also, companies don't have to pay the insurances and the wages of workers, all they need is the cleaning tool! Eventually, the accident rate can be reduced and again, time, money and energy can be saved.

Window cleaner

Other than the window of skyscrapers, this tool can be used to clean the wall and ceiling of your house too, in which we seldom clean it by ourselves due to inconvenient and dangerous in some extent. This is also quite a tiring work as you may easily get tired and dizziness if you constantly tilt up your head while cleaning the ceiling. With this tool, all these problem can be solved.

ceiling cleaner

Is this multipurpose cleaning tool sounds attractive to you? The target customers can be owners of those tall building, cleaning companies and also the housewives! Can you see how great the potential of this tool in cleaning industry?

Malaysia is a developing country, this indicating that more and more building will be built in the future for the purpose of industrialisation. Since there will be more buildings, more cleaners are needed. But, how many people out there are willing to take this risky job? Additionally, buyers can use this multipurpose cleaning tool to clean not only widow but wall and ceiling too. Therefore, this tool will definitely work and have a great potential to be marketed in the future.

To manufacture this multipurpose tool, we need money. So how are we going to raise funds for manufacturing? We can create a video film and promote this idea to the companies that involved in cleaning industry. We can also create a prototype and test it on real situation. A demonstration can be done with the prototype to show investors how the tool works. By doing so, this will attract more and more investors as they see how great the tool is with their own eyes.

Many engineers do explore solutions from nature into their inventions. The examples are shinkensan bullet train (Japanese bullet train) by mimicking kingfisher, a fish-eating fowl that creates barely a ripple when it darts into water in search of a meal); coating of boat and planes inspired by sharkskin;
velcro inspired by burdock burrs and etc. As an engineer, we shall continue to research and explore more on nature to get inspiration to design or invent more biomimetic products or system.

Bioinspiration of houseflies

After the previous posts, any idea pop out in your mind from biomimicry perspective? Now, I would like to discuss the bio-inspirations discovered from houseflies.

1) Cleaning tools

Do you notice that houseflies will extend their "tongue" when they are eating? If you don't, you can refer to this picture.

Houseflies digest their food externally, unlike other animals. They applied solvent liquid onto the food to dissolve the food into liquid form so that they can suck up. So, how do they digest food externally?

This special phenomena attributed by the unique sponging mouth parts of houseflies. The mouth parts consist of a fleshy labium, at the end of which are large, sponge-like organs called the labella (singular, labellum). Labium can be moved and bent. The labella is a complex structure which consists of many grooves, called pseudotrachea. It sops up liquids similar to what sponge does. Salivary secretions from the labella help in dissolving and collecting food particles so that they may be more easily taken up by the pseudo trachea (by capillary action). Then, the liquid food is drawn up from the pseudotracheae through the food channel into the esophagus. 

Housefly labellum magnification 41x

Housefly mouth part structure

Housefly labellum magnification 170x

 Housefly labellum showing individual papillae 
structure (magnification 2300x)

From the mechanism that houseflies suck up food into pseudotrachea by capillary action, we could apply this idea in developing an efficient, sustainable and environmental friendly cleaning tool like vacuum cleaner or mop. We can make use of the capillary action instead of electricity to capture particles. 

2) Spiked shoes for athlete

There are many functions of houseflies feet. The claws on feet can grab to hold on and the small hairs can adhere to smooth surfaces through Van Der Waals force. Other hairs are sensory organs which allow them to taste food with their feet.

Close-up of the tacky hairs and claws on a fly foot taken with an Electron microscope

Fly has two fat foot pads on each of the foot that provide plenty of surface area with which to cling. The adhesive pads on the feet, called pulvilli, come equipped with tiny hairs (also known as satae) that have spatula-like tips. Van Der Waals force will be created between fly foot and surface that allow them to cling to the wall or ceiling like gecko. This mechanism allows gloves and shoes with millions of tiny hairs to be manufactured to assist rock climbers, or workers who need to keep a firm grip on their tools. Not to forget that shoes could be developed for athlete especially track runners to replace the spikes shoes. This is for the safety issue as athlete could get hurt by the spikes. 

Rock climbing gloves

Spiked shoes for track and field