Nature: a perfect prototype  

The SMH has an article on the science of biomimicry - Nature: a perfect prototype.

Humans like to think we're pretty good at design and technology - but we often forget that Mother Nature had a head start of 3.6 billion years. Now the burgeoning science of biomimicry, which reverse-engineers clever ideas from the natural world, is exploiting the way geckoes climb walls or hummingbirds hover.

Such efforts have been employed for years. Joseph Paxton's designs for the Crystal Palace, home of London's Great Exhibition of 1851, were based in part on his observations of the structure of giant water lilies.

George de Mestral, a Swiss engineer, came up with the concept of Velcro after observing the way burdock seeds clung to his clothes and the fur of his dog.

Yet as we become more concerned about the environmental impact of our behaviour, biomimicry is becoming fashionable.

"Imitating natural systems is about trying to mimic the amazing effectiveness of ecosystems, where the waste from one system or animal is used as the nutrients for another," says Michael Pawlyn, the director of a sustainable architecture firm. "Often, by applying ideas from ecosystems you can turn problems into solutions that are better both environmentally and commercially."

Suppose you want to clean a building cheaply. Scientists noticed lotus plants are self-cleaning - they grow in muddy environments yet remain pristine. Researchers found tiny ridges and bumps on the leaves that stop water from spreading across the surface; instead, droplets slide away, carrying dirt with them. Result: self-cleaning solar panels and paint. The paint retains tiny bumps in its surface when it dries, copying the lotus.

There are plenty of examples of biomimicry from across the world, including: ...

See like a bee

Nissan's goal of halving the number of deaths or serious injuries involving its vehicles between 1995 and 2015 seemed an ambitious task. But the company had a secret weapon: the bumblebee.

The Japanese firm has unveiled a new micro robotic car, the BR23C, which avoids collisions by using sensors based on the creatures' compound eyes. With a field of vision of more than 300 degrees, bees fly uninterrupted inside their personal space and dodge obstacles.

To recreate the function of a compound eye, engineers at Nissan came up with the idea of a Laser Range Finder.

The LRF detects obstacles up to two metres away within a 180-degree radius in front of the car, calculates the distance and sends a signal to an on-board microprocessor to help the driver to avoid a collision.

"The split-second it detects an obstacle, the robot will mimic the movements of a bee and instantly change direction by turning its wheels at right angles or greater to avoid a collision," says Toshiyuki Andou, manager of Nissan's mobility laboratory and principal engineer on the project. The firm plans to incorporate the system into manually driven cars.

Dine at the wormery

One of Pawlyn's more ambitious plans - for which he is still trying to find funding - is the Community Ecology Centre, in which the building's external form and internal function mimic the natural world.

"We wanted to create a celebratory form of architecture which is commercially viable, links energy production and water purification, and acts as a social hub," he says.

At the heart of the centre is a greenhouse, with tropical fruit and vegetables grown near the ceiling, where it's hotter.

The produce will be served in a restaurant; the waste food will feed a wormery; the worms will be fed to tilapia, a type of fish; and the tilapia will be served to the diners. Any rubbish will be processed by an anaerobic digester, a kind of processor in which micro-organisms break down the waste in an oxygen-free environment, producing biogas to heat the greenhouse and provide electricity.

Meanwhile, a "living machine", designed to mimic the filtration process that occurs in natural wetlands, will turn the sewage into clean water. ...

Strong mussels

Australian scientists also turn to nature for inspiration. Dean Cameron was reading a bedtime story to his son about animals when he had an epiphany.

He'd been working on a way to join plastic waste-water tanks together that would allow them to be transported in separate pieces, potentially saving his company hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. What caught his eye was a picture of a mussel.

"They have an intriguing mechanism for holding onto rocks, or another substrate," Cameron says. The picture showed how the mussel extended many flexible threads of protein into small cracks in rocks giving it a tenacious hold.

Seeing the way mussels and clams held onto rocks in "life or death situations" gave Cameron the spur he needed to proceed with the design of his Joinlox invention - a fastening system that joins two overlapping, crenellated surfaces with a flexible strip of plastic.

"You're not going to improve on processes that have been under the evolutionary spotlight for a long time," he said.

Just like the flexible threads used by the mussel, the plastic strip bends to absorb forces imposed on the joint, making the join remarkably strong.

This mollusc-inspired invention won Cameron the 2008 Invention of the Year award on the ABC show The New Inventors.

The mechanism was described as "Velcro for the manufacturing industry" and has wide-reaching applications in many areas, as it allows the creation of a strong join with no special materials or technique.