31. Systems Design Concepts Mimicking Bio-inspired Self-assembly

Design of complex self-assembly systems requires intelligent solutions that can be manufactured effectively and efficiently. Self-organization is the spontaneous formation of organized structures that can dynamically reconfigure with changing environments. These processes are primarily observed in chemical and biological processes that resemble large-scale ecosystems and in environments as small as biological cells. Inspired by these natural processes, there is also a growing research interest in developing 4D design and printing technologies in which 3D structures reconfigure with changing stimuli. The 4D design process requires appropriate design, computational, and simulation tools aimed at building structures at larger scales that can augment the current engineering design and manufacturing processes. This study presents a new multi-agent framework with two new paradigms called agents-as-blocks and free-agent. We present further details on these new strategies in the form of preliminary case studies applied to simulating micro-environments of microtubules’ self-organization process and through a vibration simulation platform. Our simulation results closely follow the real formation patterns in the microtubules process and show some interesting self-organizing and self-assembling patterns that change with varying geometries, rules, and stimuli in a vibration platform environment.