Imitating the secrets of nature
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Written by Thomas Hesselberg
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Monday, 27 August 2007 |
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Page 3 of 4 Designing on nature’s term Biomimetic combine studies of nature, or at least studies of scientific literature, with the traditional design process. Biomimetic is highly specialised and requires considerably technological know-how. Collaboration with other scientists is therefore necessary since one person seldom will have enough specialised knowledge in all areas to successfully go from the initial study to the finished product. However, the principles behind biomimetics are relatively simple and older than the name itself. Nature has long inspired man. There is nothing fundamentally surprising by the fact that nature has come up with solutions that are also useful to our technology. Evolution is constrained by the same physical laws as human design. Both nature and man are limited by the resources. In nature it is energy and in our society it is money.
In earlier times man was probably more inspired by nature than it is today. We, as a society, have created an environment which is less influenced by nature than in earlier times. Biomimetic can be viewed as a rediscovery of the worth of nature. Its value is seen when we explore landscapes on Mars, where there are no roads and thus limits to the usefulness of the wheel and it is seen when we attempt to cure diseases in the body without causing too much damage. Biomimetic scientists learn much from the organisms that live within our body without causing physical harm and from the organisms that roam the open landscape without leaving traces.
Biomimetics has a large potential for unmanned space exploration. We are far from exporting our infrastructure to other planets or to terraform them. As a consequence our usual transport solutions run into problems. Although the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have been very successful, they move slowly and on the rugged surface of Mars it takes them almost a week to cover 200 m. Nature’s solutions on the other hand are designed for unpredictable and changing terrain. NASA is aware of that and as early as 1994 they developed a robot, Dante II, to explore volcanoes, where the overall six-legged design was inspired by insects. Since then researchers have incorporated more and more details from the insects into biologically inspired legged robots. Researchers at the University of Illinois in USA, for instance, have made significant progress with building a robot, which imitates the locomotion and morphology of cockroaches. However, considerable progress in neurobiology and biomechanics are needed before the robots reach a performance that can be compared with that of the insects.
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