An American bicycle repairman drew a bicycle inner tube from the inner tube box and handed it to his customer. Then the two began to chat, and the repairman began to fiddle with the inner tube packaging box at will. When he grasped the two ends of the box and twisted it back and forth, he found that it could change the shape of the box smoothly. You can try a toothpaste box. This is a trivial discovery, but it is enough to change the whole world.
This bicycle mechanic is wilbur wright. At that time, he and his brother Orville Wright were developing an airplane. A big problem they encounter is how to control the flight attitude of the plane. The twisted inner tube packaging box inspired the Wright brothers to manipulate the flight attitude of the plane by twisting the shape of the wing.
In the process of invention and creation, accidental discovery always plays an important role. Besides the Wright brothers inventing the airplane, there are many other examples. For example 1948, the Swiss engineer George de Mestral came back from a walk with his dog and found that the dog was covered with grass seeds and there were many small hooks on it. This unexpected discovery led him to finally invent velcro. In 195 1, Harry Coover from Kodak Company in Hysmans found that a chemical material was too sticky to stick to anything when he was looking for a thermal insulation polymer for the cockpit cover of an airplane. Later, he realized that this kind of thing could be used as glue, so the universal glue was born.
The stories of these inventors are really fascinating, but relying on accidental inventions often means that things have no results for a long time. Hundreds of years later, people still invent and create in a very old way, which is inefficient and can't keep up with other industries.
However, now we have begun to learn to create good luck for ourselves. Those rare inspirations can soon be gradually replaced by computer software. In other words, computer-aided inventions are coming to us.
In the 1990s, the research team led by John Koza, a computer scientist at Stanford University in the United States, conducted groundbreaking research on computer-aided inventions. They use a computer algorithm to simulate the evolution in nature, the so-called "genetic algorithm". When using genetic algorithm, the computer regards a scheme as a genome, and the genes in the genome represent various parameters such as voltage, focal length or material density. At first, the computer will randomly generate some genome samples from the initial gene pool, although they may not be a good solution. By crossing these genomes and introducing "variation", each offspring contains both some features of the previous generation and some new features that may be beneficial. Then give these offspring genomes a specific task to test them. Select the best one as the gene pool for the next round of breeding. In this way, repeating this process again and again, just like natural selection, the best scheme will eventually survive.
Koza's team conducted some tests to see if this genetic algorithm can reinvent the following basic circuits: filters, amplifiers and feedback control systems developed by Bell Labs in the 1920s and 1930s. Finally, their experiment succeeded. Their genetic algorithm can reinvent the classic Bell Laboratories circuit.
If you think they are just lucky, then they have many successful examples. For example, they used this genetic algorithm to make various combinations of six kinds of eyepieces for various optical instruments. Their algorithm not only copied all optical systems, but also improved some original designs. Among them, this improvement can be used to apply for a patent.
Genetic algorithm has strong universality, and researchers will show the inventions made by genetic algorithm at the annual meeting of Genetic and Evolutionary Computing held by American Computer Association. For example, at the meeting of 20 15, a research team from Italy used genetic algorithm to find an efficient swimming posture for an underwater drone with four tentacles. Engineers from the Advanced Concept Laboratory of the European Space Agency used genetic algorithm to design the most fuel-efficient route for future space equipment to clean up low-orbit space junk.
Every year, the biggest prize, called the "Human Competitiveness Award", is awarded to those inventions that are considered to be beyond human intelligence. In 2004, the first human competitiveness award was awarded to a grotesque antenna. This invention was funded by NASA. It looks like a lush and weird tree with many ugly branches, but it works very well. This kind of thing is definitely not designed by human beings.
And this often becomes the key to the problem. When computers are used to assist inventions, they will not be blinded by human preconceived ideas, so computers can make inventions that humans have never thought of.
20 15 "human competitiveness award" was awarded to a method to improve the calculation accuracy of ultra-low power computer. This kind of computer is based on simple logic circuit, which consumes less power, but it will produce many operational errors. Computer scientists at Brno University of Technology in Czech Republic used genetic algorithm to make software evolve continuously, and finally found a simple error correction method. Their research result is a green chip, which is suitable for programs with low calculation accuracy, such as streaming music or video.
Help you think laterally.
However, using genetic algorithm, you still have a problem to face: you need to know all the details about what you invented in advance so that your algorithm can improve it in a productive way. This means that genetic algorithms are often good at optimizing existing inventions, which do not require great innovation and usually do not bring inventions of great commercial value. So, what more innovation can computers bring us?
When an inventor invents a new thing, he often notices something that many people ignore. If computers can attract people's attention to things that are easily overlooked in problems, then we can use them to produce a very innovative invention. Recently, the American Innovation Accelerator Company has developed a software that can be used to help inventors pay attention to things that are easy to miss. So, how does their software do this?
Their software allows you to describe a problem in human language, and then it will decompose the problem into a large number of related phrases, and use these to search in the patent database to find out which inventions have solved similar problems. Most importantly, this software will look for similar problems in other fields. In other words, software can help you think laterally.
In one example, the tester asked the software to find a way to reduce the risk of concussion of football players during the game. The software takes apart the description of the problem, and then searches for the following keywords to find solutions: reducing energy, absorbing energy, exchanging force, reducing momentum, reacting force, changing direction, and repelling energy. Finally, according to the search results of "energy exclusion", the company finally invented a helmet with strong magnets, which can repel each other and effectively reduce the serious collision of helmets. Unfortunately, this invention was patented by others a few weeks ago. But this example shows that the software of innovation accelerator can really help a lot.
Another example is that the software successfully copied the recent innovations of snowboard manufacturers. The problem is to find ways to reduce the vibration of snowboards during skiing and make skiers skate faster and safer. The manufacturer accidentally found the answer to this question, and the software of innovation accelerator can be found quickly. Violin manufacturers have found a way to reduce the extra vibration of musical instruments to produce pure music, and the software will prompt that this method can be applied to snowboarding.
Tony mccaffrey, chief technology officer of Innovation Accelerator, believes that 90% of the problems have been solved in other fields, and all you have to do is find them. He is now planning to use IBM's supercomputer Watson to analyze millions of files to help the software understand patents and technical papers more deeply.
Iprova, another Swiss technology company, also invented the technology of "computer accelerated invention" to help inventors think laterally, and the source of ideas far exceeds patent documents. The company doesn't want to disclose how their software works, but a patent on 20 13 shows that its software will provide customers with "suggested innovation opportunities", not only from patent databases and technical journals, but also from blogs, online news websites and social networks.
What is particularly interesting is that Iprova's software can also change suggestions with the changes of hot topics on the Internet. In this way, it will bring more effective suggestions. Iprova's software can produce hundreds of high-quality inventions every month, and then the company will communicate with customers, and customers can choose some to apply for patents. Iprova's customers mainly come from the health care, automation and telecommunications industries, and Philips, a multinational technology company, is one of them. It can be seen that the business of Iprova company is booming.
Computer invention is caught in a patent dilemma
However, if most of the work is done by computers, this kind of thing may destroy the patent system itself. The current patent system requires that a patent can only be granted when "ordinary technicians" think that an invention is not obvious. However, if the inventor only invented it with a computer, then the invention may be regarded as an obvious output result of the computer, which may not necessarily meet the conditions for applying for a patent.
Now, this concern has become very serious in the research and development of drugs. If it is found that the tool software of drugs has become so powerful that researchers only need to be responsible for monitoring the activities of the software, which will make the whole drug research and development process an obvious thing, then can they still apply for a patent at this time? Therefore, computer-aided invention technology may make many inventions lose patent protection, which will greatly dampen the enthusiasm of inventors.
But in any case, in the process of future invention, computer-aided will play an increasingly important role. Computers will accelerate technological progress, bring fair competition and make many people inventors. Although people often say that opportunities are always reserved for those who are prepared, now, with the help of computers, we can greatly increase the probability of accidental discovery. In other words, computers can help us reap more good luck.