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How we’re using creature features Biomimicry. Scientists are constantly looking for inspiration in the natural world. Metro investigates the world of biomimicry.
Nature’s Nine Laws Janine Benyus stresses nine laws of nature. She argues that each property should be of vital consideration to any truly biomimetic design. • Nature runs on sunlight
Many of us would regard science and technological invention created by human hands and minds as something far removed from nature, even something that pushes us further away from it. However, many of our most ingenious scientific inventions couldn’t have been realized without nature’s help, which in truth has millions of years of experience more than humans in the field of technological as well as sustainable development. Biomimicry – the field of engineering where we look at nature for inspiration – has been a part of human invention for millennia, but was only coined as a term in 1997 by author Janine Benyus in her book “Biomimicry: innovation inspired by nature”. The term comes from the Greek words ‘bios’, meaning ‘life’, and ‘mimesis’, meaning ‘to imitate’. Even though the term is already well known and has been addressed from different perspectives, it has now been given more added currency as scientists and policymakers try to create a more sustainable planet to live in. Across millions of years, living things have developed mechanisms through evolution to face the challenges their environment where they live present to them, with the only goal being to adapt and survive. These mechanisms have become a source of inspiration to create incredible technological advances from ordinary things such as Velcro, inspired on a plant known as the alpine thistle, or the reflective surfaces used in cars, bikes or wagons, copied from the cat’s eyes. Even, silk weaved by spiders
• Nature uses only the energy it needs • Energy fits form to function
KELLAR AUTUMN Professor and Chair of Biology at Lewis & Clark College (Specialist in biomechanics)
Can you explain what is biomimicry? There is a range of approaches to applying nature in engineering and design. It really depends on what your goal is. Are you trying to design a better solution to an engineering problem? Fundamental principles of biological function can be useful in engineering. Let’s call it bio-inspired engineering.
Building that its thermoregulation is as a termite nest The Eastgate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe, is the best example of the biomimicry principles used in the architecture. The building was developed using innovative passive environmental systems. Modelled on the way that termites construct
their nest to ventilate, cool and heat it entirely through natural means, Eastgate’s ventilation system costs one-tenth that of a comparable air-conditioned building and uses 35 per cent less energy than comparable conventional buildings in Harare.
• Energy recycles everything • Nature rewards cooperation • Nature banks on diversity • Nature demands local expertise • Nature curbs excess from within • Nature taps the power of limits
Gecko has it: Using the technology of lizard feet. / STANFORD UNIVERSITY
has been used for human means. In 2012, textile experts created a silk cape made from the weavings of 1.2 million Golden Orb spiders, a garment that took four years to make. Indeed, there are thousand of examples of human inventions which have been inspired by nature. However, according to Julian Vincent, director of the Biomimetics and Natural Technology Center of the University of Bath, England, “humans have only taken advantage of 10 per cen of the possible symbiosis between biology and technol-
ogy in terms of used applications”. In an interview to Metro, Kellar Autumn, professor and chair of biology at Lewis & Clark College in in Portland, Oregon, and an expert in biomimicry, explains that the field may be divided in three are: “Bio-inspired engineering in which fundamental principles of biological function can be useful in engineering; bio-inspired design, in which the nature is copied for artistic or product purposes; and bioinspired marketing, in which nature is used as a marketing
Are you trying to make something look and feel “natural”? Copying nature for artistic or product design is becoming popular. Let’s call this bioinspired design.
display are classic examples. Highly mobile legged robots based on the biomechanics of animal locomotion. A decade of research on the biomechanics of locomotion of real animals including cockroaches, goats, and dogs showed that when animals run, they bounce like pogo sticks. We have gecko-like synthetic adhesives. Geckos can run up smooth vertical surfaces. By measuring the tiny forces involved, my colleagues and I discovered how they can do that. The discovery of how geckos stick lead us to design a new type of adhesive that is self cleaning and can function in the vacuum of outer space. Wind turbine and fan blades which are designed based on research on whale flipper biomechanics.
strategy to sell some products.” Paradoxically, even, biomimicry can be an extreme movement used in a society to dominate and “improve” nature. “Unlike the Industrial Revolution, the Biomimicry Revolution introduces an era based not on what we can extract from nature, but on what we can learn from her,” writes Benyus in her article “Living Lessons of Biomimicry”. Our ancestors recognized that biomimicry was a very good idea, a way to look at nature with the aim to get the required inspiration to solve some of their issues. Now, could this science help us answer the question how can we live on Planet Earth without destroying it? Also, could it be a new way to appreciate the value of nature and rescue it?
DANIEL CASILLAS MWN
Q&A
“Nature has lots of hidden patents”
Examples of biomimicry
Are you trying to sell a product? Biomimicry is trendy, and many are using it as a marketing strategy. Sometimes a product exists, and a biological connection is made afterward. I call that bio-marketing. What inventions do you know who have been made from elements of nature? There are many examples of biologically inspired engineering. Velcro, lotus effect paint and the butterfly-structural color Mirasol
How important is the nature for the development of technology? Genrich Altshuller, the developer of TRIZ (an acronym of a Russian phrase that means “the theory of inventive problem solving”), said, “In nature, there are lots of hidden patents.” I think what he was getting at was that biological systems arrive at solutions that are unpredictable and, in some cases, unimaginable to us until we see them. There are millions of species, each with different solutions to life’s problems, with secrets that are waiting for us to discover them. But the scary thing is that extinction is taking these books off the shelves and burning them faster than we can open them and read them.
Vehicle mimicking photosynthesis China’s SAIC Motors Company has unveiled the prototype of a vehicle, dubbed Ye Zi, which is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell whose operation mimics photosynthesis. The process called ‘Artificial
Photosynthesis’ uses sunlight to decompose water molecules in hydrogen and oxygen atoms. In the procedure, hydrogen propels the vehicle battery while the car emits oxygen to the atmosphere.
Nano sensors and screens inspired by the wings of butterflies Scientists at GE (General Electric) are working on a butterfly-based technology to develop a new generation of sensors that will be able to detect all types of explosives and chemical
weapons. Similarly, other scientists are basing their research on the reflection of sunlight that make butterfly wings to create TV screens with superior resolution.
Bullet Train, with a bird’s beak The Shinkansen Bullet Train of the West Japan Railway Company is the fastest train in the world, traveling 200 miles per hour and part of their engineering is based on a small bird known as kingfisher. The initial problem with this train was that it generated a lot of noise
every time the train emerged from a tunnel, causing residents onequarter a mile away to complain. Modelling the front end of the train after the beak of a kingfisher resulted not only in a quieter train, but 15% less electricity use even while the train travels 10% faster.