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.