Where do inventors get all their ideas? Well, some of them just take a stroll outside their front door. Because there are oodles of radical solutions and sophisticated design tips we can learn from the rest of the animal kingdom (and the plant kingdom too for that matter). There’s nothing new about borrowing design ideas from nature, but now it’s got a shiny new name… and it’s taking the world by storm. They call it "BIOMIMETICS" Take survival. Humans have adapted to life in almost every environment on Earth. Wet or dry, hot or cold, we’ve developed technologies that allow us to cope. But there are always organisms better able than us to survive in any particular environment… so the question is, how do they do it? And what can we learn from them? Nature has perfected its designs through billions of years of evolution, so mimicking its creations is a sure way of producing technologies that are both efficient and reliable. But biomimetics is about more than just simply copying what other organisms do. It’s about integrating and adapting the best designs nature has to offer into the technology we use today and the technology we want for tomorrow. Smart ideas from the undersea world … If we want to swim faster we need look no further than fish. Speedo® has developed FastskinTM, a swimsuit that mimics the denticles, or ridges, on shark skin to reduce drag in the water. The material also fits closely to the skin supporting the swimmer’s muscles and reducing fatigue. And there are other tricks we can learn from our fishy friends. Take the tuna. Its body is designed for sustained speed and it can power through the ocean for long periods of seemingly effortless swimming. Which makes it way more efficient than any submersible we humans have come up with so far. Engineers at the famous Massachusettes Institute of Technology in Boston have analysed the tuna’s technique and created a mechanical version: Robo-Tuna. It looks like a machine, but it swims like a fish! The undulating motion of its tail moves the craft through the water with minimum use of power and maximum manoeuvrability. Less power use means longer battery life so it can swim further. … and from insects Flying insects have also provided inspiration. Robo-flies fly like real insects and their efficiency means they require very little power. Swarms of these miniature machines may become the fighter jets of the future, overcoming enemy attack by sheer weight of numbers. Bees are top engineers Take the humble honeycomb, with its hexagonal compartments. It’s great for storing honey … but it’s also a great design and extremely robust structure. So why confine it to beehives?! Engineers at the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona have used the honeycomb design to give the two huge mirrors the strength needed to support their own weight. When the telescope goes into operation in 2004 it will be the most powerful telescope ever constructed and it will all be thanks to bees. The future’s bright, the future’s biomimetic What else can biomimetics help us with? The sky’s the limit! But how about this one: in nature you’d never find a penguin combined with a pine cone but scientists are working on it! Or at least, they’re looking at borrowing aspects of both to create a fabric which insulates like a penguin’s feathers but retains or releases moisture like the opening and closing of pine cone. Such material would respond to the wearer and keep them at a perfect temperature without having to add or remove layers of clothing – pretty smart, huh...? Links The Centre for Biomimetics, University of Reading http://www.rdg.ac.uk/Biomim/home.htm Biomimetics: Biologically-Inspired Technologies from NASA http://ndeaa.jpl.nasa.gov/nasa-nde/biomimetics/bm-hub.htm Natural Born Robots – teaching resources (but interesting for anyone!) http://ndeaa.jpl.nasa.gov/nasa-nde/biomimetics/bm-hub.htm
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