BIONIS

Top biomimetic innovations of 2009

13th January 2010, Greenerdesign.com
The Year in Biomimicry: Fins For Humans, The Aquapenguin and Robots With Whiskers
Tom McKeag’s blog proposes some candidates for the top biomimetic innovations of 2009. Take a look here and see if you agree!

Iron-plated snail could inspire new armour

27^th January  2010, MIT
Tiny snails sitting on the ocean floor might seem defenceless against a large, determined predator such as a crab. But evolution has provided one species of sea snail with a unique iron-plated armoured shell that resists such attacks, new research from MIT shows. Engineers who wanted to mimic the snail’s unique stability and penetration resistance — valuable traits for armour — could copy the tri-layer structure but replace the organic components with manmade components such as bulletproof materials. Read more here.

Mangroves inspire skyscrapers of the future

5^th January 2010, Inhabitat.com
Design team Chimera has conceived of an incredible series of spiralling skyscrapers for London modelled after the complex ecosystems created by the mangrove tree. Dubbed Mangal City, the project is an “urban ecological system” composed of modular pod capsules that shift to adapt to environmental and contextual conditions. A beautiful example of biomimicry and certainly a flight of fancy, the plan proposes a futuristic building system based upon flexibility. Read more here.

Shrimp's eye points way to better DVDs
25^th October 2009, Reuters
The amazing eyes of a giant shrimp living on Australia's Great Barrier Reef could hold the key to developing a new type of super high-quality DVD player. They can see in 12 primary colours, four times as many as humans. Now a team at the University of Bristol have shown how the shrimps do it, using remarkable light-sensitive cells that rotate the plane of polarization in light as it travels through the eye. Transferring the same multi-color ability into a DVD player would result in a machine capable of handling far more information than a conventional one. Read more here. The original paper, in Nature Photonics, can be found here.

Rotorcraft mimics maple seed design
20th October, 2009,The Engineer
Aerospace engineering graduate students at the University of Maryland's Clark School of Engineering have mimicked the design of the maple seed, or samara fruit, to create the world's smallest controllable single-winged rotorcraft. The maple-seed-inspired design is valuable because when dropped, unpowered, from a plane and then controlled remotely, it could perform surveillance manoeuvres for defence, fire monitoring and search-and-rescue purposes. Read the full story here and see a video of the concept and development here.

Nanoscale replication of butterfly wings
12th October 2009, CordisWire
A team of researchers from the Pennsylvania State University (USA) and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) have developed a technique to replicate biological structures, such as butterfly wings, on a nano scale. The resulting bioreplicated material could be used to make optically active structures, such as optical diffusers for solar panels. Insects' colours and their iridescence (the ability to change colours depending on the angle) or their ability to appear metallic are determined by tiny nano-sized photonic structures, which can be found in their cuticle. Scientists have focused on these biostructures to develop devices with light emitting properties. Read more here. The full paper can be found in Bioinspiration & Biomimetics.

Researchers developing cockroach-inspired robots, cheetah-bots
12^th October 2009, IEEE Spectrum
Report from the workshop on Biologically Inspired Robotics at the 2009 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, covering recent advances in the field. Read the full story here. Further details on the cockroach can be found here and the cheetah-bot here. There is clearly a lot of interest in bioinspired robotics at the moment- see also some interesting recent work at Berkeley on hexapodal runners and adhesion surfaces here.

TU Müenchen develops steel ‘Velcro’
6^th October 2009, The Engineer
Perhaps the most famous biomimetic invention has been given a novel twist by researchers in Munich. The Engineer reports the development of this new product. Temperatures in excess of 800°C and aggressive chemical solutions do not pose any problem for Metaklett, which also offers adhesive strength of up to 35 tonnes per square metre when tensile force is applied parallel to the fastener surface. Read more about this story here.

Nissan develops collision-free robot inspired by fish
1^st October, 2009
The Eporo robot car is a demonstrator concept for automatic avoidance of other vehicles, inspired by the rules used by schooling fish to prevent collisions. The test bed for future vehicle technologies was unveiled at CEATEC Japan on 6^th October.
Read the Nissan press release here and watch the robot in action in on YouTube

Bionic Eye
The Engineer On Line, 17 June 2009
Scientists at the University of Manchester, UK, have developed a bionic eye to restore some level of visual capability in patients suffering from retinal degradation. Manchester eye specialists have implanted an artificial retina or 'bionic eye' in two patients who became blind due to advanced retinitis pigmentosa – an inherited and degenerative disease of the retina. The system uses a pair of cameras to provide electrical signals to stimulate retinal nerves. Extensive testing is just beginning on the two Manchester patients as the implant and video camera link are turned on to try and optimise retinal stimulation. More information can be found here.

Ten Inspirational And Creative Bionic Designs
Yanko Design Magazine 's Top 10 Biomimetic Innovations, June 2009
"Design is a heady mix of inspiration and perspiration. One avenue that some designers seriously contemplate but rarely incorporate is Biomimetics...... Here is a look at Ten Creative Bionic Designs that look awesome and are almost as perfect as their inspiration. Almost,.......you can’t get better than Mother Nature."
Do you think they’ve missed anything important? - you can find their list here.

Sperm-like nanopropeller is smallest swimmer ever
by Jon Evans,  New Scientist, 27 May 2009
A new propeller, only two microns long, has been developed by scientists at Harvard. The way it swims mimics the corkscrew motion of the flagellum of a bacterium. Flagella are the structures some bacteria use to swim through water. ..... "Because water is syrupy at small scales, ordinary swimming motions don't work well. 'Picture trying to swim in a pool of asphalt on a hot summer's day,' says Peer Fischer of The Rowland Institute at Harvard University." Instead, flagella use a corkscrew motion to drive bacteria through the water. The device carried a 200nm ‘head’, which may have the potential to be used to deliver drugs to parts of the body with a high degree of accuracy. .... "To make their propellers, Ghosh and Fischer covered a silicon wafer with glass beads, before depositing a vapour of silicon dioxide onto them. While doing so they spun the wafer, causing the silicon dioxide to form corkscrew-shaped tails on each bead." Read more here.

Supersticky robots to follow in geckos' footsteps
by Paul Marks, New Scientist, 27 April 2009
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a robot, by using gecko-inspired adhesives, that can ‘walk’ on ceilings. The ability to scale walls and hang off the ceiling with gecko-like ease may be within reach - for robots at least. "Metin Sitti and Ozgur Unver of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, say their new robots - a sticky-tracked wall climber and a 16-legged ceiling walker - could tackle many jobs in the home including painting ceilings and clearing cobwebs. They could also play a part in exploration, inspection, repair and even search and rescue.
Previous wall and ceiling climbers have used suction for locomotion. But suction has drawbacks: it requires lots of energy to drive a vacuum pump, and motion is limited to smooth surfaces like glass.The new robots, however, rely on a "sticky" elastic polymer, or elastomer, that can adhere to a variety of surfaces, including wood, metal, glass and brick. The idea is to mimic the mechanism which geckos use to climb walls and walk upside down." Check out the amazing video footage on the New Scientist website here.

Bats and Bees Give Micro-UAVs Street Cred
Graham Warwick, 10^th October 2008
Aurora Flight Sciences is working with the University of Maryland on an Air Force Research Laboratory contract to demonstrate a vision-based guidance system for micro air vehicles that combines optics and sonar and allows small UAVs to navigate autonomously down city streets and through urban canyons. Bat-inspired echolocation will allow the MAV to detect and dodge obstacles like trees, poles and wires. This is needed as the visual sensor is not sensitive enough to see small objects because it uses a phenomenon called optical flow to allow the MAV to navigate relative to its surroundings. Optical flow is a technique being explored for machine vision applications, so far mainly for ground robotics. Read more.

Ripple Effect: Water Snails offer new Propulsion Possibilities
San Diego, October 2008
UC San Diego engineer has revealed a new mode of propulsion based on how water snails create ripples of slime to crawl upside down beneath the surface. The research shows that the secret is in the slime. Movement  is undertaken on soft surfaces, such as the free surface of a pond or a lake, can be distorted by applying forces; these distortions can be exploited (by an animal, or in the lab) to generate propulsive forces and move. Some freshwater and marine snails crawl by “hanging” from the water surface while secreting a trail of mucus. An example of a biomimetic system that could be designed based on this research are small robotic swimmers, which could crawl underneath the free surface in a coordinated fashion. Read more.

Defense Technology International. Two articles from the September issue:
Insects Inspire MAV Design (p 14)As micro air vehicles become smaller, soldiers may well use them as their own tactical reconnaissance assets. Researchers at BAE Systems say that MAV will look like individual insects, which is no co-incidence …….. something the size of a dragonfly……….. with video imaging could move in for a closer look. Other micro robots would have radio antenna for signal interception, or chemical sensors. Read more (Defense Technology International is an on line nxtbook, and you will need a flash player to read the articles)

Bio-Armour (p 51)The MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology is dissecting what may be a viable design for body armour. Polypterus senegalus, also known as the dinosaur eel is a fish with prehistoric bloodlines which go back 96 million years. It has scales in multiple layers that act as an armoured suit. Each scale has four different layer materials. In a U.S.Army-funded study, researchers found that the shape and thickness of the layers, their sequence and the junctions between them resist penetrating attacks. Read more. Details of Research from the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies Website

Tiny synthetic tree pumps water by  Heidi Ledford, Nature, 10 September 2008
A 'microtree' created from a synthetic gel used to make contact lenses has replicated water transport in plants. The design could be tweaked to improve extraction of water from dry soils, or to create more efficient cooling systems, researchers say.Water climbs from root to leaf when evaporation reduces water pressure within the leaf, sucking up water through a type of hollow plant tissue called xylem. ........ attempts to replicate the system in the lab have often met with defeat. Sometimes the artificial channels were too fragile to withstand the pressure difference; or minute imperfections in a channel wall could trigger an embolism and disrupt the system. Abraham Stroock ……… of Cornell University …. say(s) that they have overcome these technical hurdles by making water channels from a hydrogel ……. that contains tiny, homogeneous pores. Their system, published this week in Nature1, generates a continuous negative pressure that pulls in water from a vapour via the 'roots' and transports it as a liquid along hydrogel channels to the 'leaves', from which the water is evaporated.

Bionic jellyfish demonstrate swarming behaviour, June 4 2008, Esslingen, Germany “Festo, in conjunction with the specialist display technology company, Effekt-Technik GmbH, has developed a bionic jellyfish – known as AquaJelly – to demonstrate swarming behaviour. Each AquaJelly is able to sense various aspects of its environment and to function completely autonomously, but is also endowed with communicative faculties that enable it to cooperate with other members of the group, and thereby behave as a system with a higher order of development….. AquaJelly is an artificial autonomous jellyfish with an electric drive unit and an intelligent adaptive mechanism that emulates swarming behaviour. It consists of a translucent hemisphere, a central watertight body and eight tentacles for propulsion. The AquaJelly's translucent hemispherical dome houses an annular control board with integrated, pressure, tight and radio sensors. “ Read More.. and you can watch the video at www.festo.com/cms/de_de/5889_6297.htm

Hercules Beetle Inspires Intelligent Materials
‘The Hercules Beetle is regarded to be the strongest creature in the world, capable of carrying up to 850 times its own weight, thanks to its super-strong protective shell. The shell also has other properties – the ability to change colour – which is helping scientists to design a new range of ‘intelligent materials’. The beetles’ shell changes from green to black as its surrounding atmosphere gets more humid. It is this property that interested researchers at the University of Namur in Belgium, who have closely examined structures in the shell that enable it to produce these colour changes. They found that normal light interference patterns within the shell resulted in a green colour. However, when water penetrated the surface, the interference patterns were distorted and the colour appeared black. If we could mimic the colour-changing abilities of the shell, it could help to devise smart materials that could act as humidity sensors, in food processing plants for example, where monitoring the moisture level is of critical importance. Research published in  New Journal of Physics, March 2008, Vol.10, 033014 pp 1-14.’

Gripping secrets of ivy revealed, from the May edition of Nano magazine
‘Researchers at the University of Tennessee have discovered the secret behind the ivy plant’s amazing gripping abilities – they appear to secrete nanoparticles that help them grip to surfaces. Microscopic rootlets spring out from the stems and secrete a “little yellowish matter”, as first described by Charles Darwin in 1876. Atomic force microscopy has now lifted the lid on the yellowish matter and revealed that it contains uniform particles 70nm across. The researchers believe the nanoparticles are produced inside the stem and then secreted out through the rootlets. The research team is now working out the mechanism by which the ivy produces nanoparticles and hope to work out exactly how they help the plant stick to surfaces. They will also investigate whether they could use ivy to produce other nanoparticles.’

Anti-reflective films inspired by insect wings
‘Nature has inspired Chinese researchers to produce a nanostructured anti-reflective film. The fascinating, anti-reflective properties of the cicada’s wing was used by the scientists at Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Nanotechnology and Engineering to produce the new material. The anti-reflective property of the cicada wing, which offers camouflage to the insect, is due to a gradual refractive index profile at the interface between the wing and the air.
The researchers deposited the wing in a gold form before transferring the pattern onto a film before being heated. The new reflective material could then be peeled off using tweezers. The gold mould could be used for more than ten times, the researchers report.’
The research was published in Nanotechnology 19 No 9 (5 March 2008) 095605 (5pp) as ‘The fabrication of subwavelength anti-reflective nanostructures using a bio-template’.

The PAX Water Mixer
“PAX Scientific, based in San Rafael, California, has been using Biomimicry to improve fluid and heat handling machinery, and has established a subsidiary, PAX Water Technologies, to commercialize its technology in water treatment and handling applications. PAX’s technology takes advantage of a fundamental principle that the underlying shape of all natural fluid flow has a common mathematical basis. Regardless of scale, natural flows follow a geometrically consistent, three-dimensional and centripetal pattern which represents the “path of least resistance to friction” and minimizes energy loss. This very principle, when applied to industrial applications, reduces frictional energy losses via streamlined flow fields, and is being applied to fan, mixer, propeller, turbine and pump applications. The PAX Water Mixer is the result of combining this new biomimetic approach with detailed mechanical engineering and rigorous validation and reliability testing.” More information

Biomimetics: From Teeth to Photonic Crystal Solar Light Collectors
American Chemical Society, August 12, 2006, by Andrei P. Sommer and Michael Gente,
Increasing insecurity about the fossil energy supply and environmental changes force us to intensify the search for clean alternative energy sources (e.g., the sun). Here, we show that the photonic crystal structure of dentin, already exploited to treat tooth inflammations, inspires a practical method to harvest sunlight. Arrays of toothlike structures mounted on silicon permit collection of sunlight virtually independent of the angle of incidence of the sun, which could be vital, for instance, in Antarctica.

Prospecting for Botanical Gold  by Nancy Eaton of Apple.com ‘Dr. Manuel Aregullin is shown examining a species of Araucariaceae, or Norfolk Island Pine, at the Cornell University Conservatory. Scientists believe that bees use plants, including this one, to produce propolis, a substance responsible for neutralizing pathogens in beehives. For countless centuries, the shamans and medicine men of indigenous cultures used word of mouth to pass along knowledge of native plant material that held the power to heal or cure. Once dismissed as primitive and unscientific, the native healers in the remaining tribes of the world are now highly respected for what they know about medicinal plants and their uses.’ Read more

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Eagle-cam provides aerodynamic insights New Scientist 11 April 2006 By hitching a ride on an eagle's back, engineers hope to learn how to build aircraft capable of similar feats of aerobatics. In a series of unique experiments, zoologists Graham Taylor and Adrian Thomas at Oxford University in the UK have equipped an eagle with miniature spy cameras and other instruments to record its movements during flight in precise detail. The tests have already provided new insight into the way birds control themselves in flight, the pair claim. …… Taylor and Thomas presented details of their work at the Society for Experimental Biology meeting in Canterbury, UK last week

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How a locust’s eardrum could lead to tiny microphones University of Bristol News 31st March 2006 Being able to hear the smallest of noises is a matter of life or death for many insects, but for the scientists studying their hearing systems understanding how insect ears can be so sensitive could lead to new microphones able to capture and analyse extremely faint sounds. Read more

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Crickets inspire fine hair sensors The December 2005 edition of Eureka Magazine featured research being done at the Centre for Biomimetics at the University of Reading. A study of the hairs used by crickets to detect small air movements has led directly to the development of very small, sensitive and light weight artificial systems in silicon and plastic for use in aerospace systems and hearing aids. While the development devices use capacitive sensors rather than neurons, other researchers have taken the actual insect neurons and grown them on Field Effect transistors with a view to making them even more sensitive and address the problem of signal processing. Contact Eureka Magazine or email The Centre for Biomimetics at Reading for more details. Also see cicada

The Slug-bot From News@Nature 13 Dec 05 Two years ago MIT engineers, led by Anette Hosoi, built a robotic snail to test out mathematical models of how snails move and stay stuck to surfaces. Now their research has gone further: A robotic snail that can climb smooth vertical walls and traverse ceilings has oozed into action. The team tested out their snail on a tilting platform, covered with a 1.5-millimetre-thick layer of slime made from Laponite, a type of clay that forms a clear, sticky gel when mixed with water. As the engineers increased the incline, they saw that the snail took the hill in its stride, continuing to plod along even when the surface was vertical. When the platform was flipped over so that the robot was upside down, it still made steady progress. The group has now developed mathematical models to come up with the optimum weight and slime characteristics for a robotic snail. Hosoi says that these should help to build a second generation of robosnails that are much faster and more manoeuvrable.

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'Frog's glue' could mend knees from BBC News, World Edition, 8th October 2004 A sticky substance from the skin of frogs could be used to repair human knee joints, scientists believe. Australian researchers have already repaired torn cartilage on the knees of 10 sheep with this natural glue, which frogs use to trap insects…. The University of Adelaide team, with colleagues in Melbourne, is attempting to make its own version….Current synthetic adhesives are strong but they are somewhat toxic and form rigid, non-porous films that can hinder wound healing. Biological glues tend to be too weak to fix parts of the body that have to withstand strong forces and wear and tear. However, the frog glue held the damaged cartilage together well in the sheep. Working with colleagues at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Melbourne, the scientists have characterised a key component of the glue and are now developing a genetically engineered version of this protein.

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Pine cone clothes from e4 Engineering, 05 October 2004 A new type of 'smart' clothing which adapts to changing temperatures to keep the wearer comfortable is being developed at the University of Bath and the London College of Fashion. In the design of the material for the clothes, Bath biomimetics specialist Professor Julian Vincent plans to mimic the way that pine cones open and close depending on whether they are dry or wet. Hence the smart garments will consist of a top layer of tiny spikes of water-absorbent material, possibly wool, each only 1/200th of a millimetre wide…..

Turtling along By Julia Pierce, From e4 Engineering, 10 September 2004 A highly manoeuvrable unmanned underwater vehicle that is easy to control in water too turbulent for other craft could soon be used for mine clearance by the US Navy. The TransPhibian, from Nekton Research of Durham LLC, North Carolina, is shaped like a turtle and uses flippers that mimic marine creatures' locomotion. It is designed to operate in the choppy water surrounding docks, bridges and in shoreline surf, where other submarines have difficulty maintaining control. If TransPhibian is washed up on shore by a wave, its four flippers can be used to make it crawl back into the sea. In water, in less than a second it can go from a standstill to making two rotations per second around its long axis………..

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Ants avoid traffic jams From Nature, 4 March 2004 by MICHAEL HOPKIN Foraging workers push and shove to steer others around bottlenecks. Less congestion means faster transport of food. When it comes to traffic congestion, ants prefer the no-nonsense approach - they barge others out of the way, forcing them to take an alternative route. .............The re-routing strategy allows ants to maintain the same flow of food back to the nest even when things start to get crowded................ "similarly simple rules could be used to manage the flow of data through networks such as telephone systems", says Peter Bentley, a computer scientist at University College London. "Congestion is a big issue," he says. "You have to work out the best route for data." Many scientists rely on the behaviour of ants or other natural systems to give them clues as to how to design computer systems that avoid overcrowded networks.

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