Biomimetics: Design by Nature

In 1948, Swiss scientist George de Mestral removed a burr stuck to his dog's fur (pictured) and
studied it under a microscope. Impressed by the stickiness of the burr, he copied the design,
engineering a two-piece fastener. One piece has stiff hooks like that of the burr, while the other has
soft loops that allow the hooks to stick, as his dog's fur had. De Mestral named his invention Velcro.

Almost all living creatures are uniquely adapted to the environment in which they live. Every
species, even those that have gone extinct, is a success story perfected over millions of years. Spider
silk is five times stronger by weight than high-grade steel. Glowworms produce a cool light with
almost no energy loss (a normal light bulb wastes 98 percent of its energy as heat). The science of
biomimetics looks to take amazing designs from nature and turn them into modern inventions.

Recently, the automotive engineers at Mercedes-Benz set out to design a fuel-efficient car with
plenty of room inside. They were inspired by the boxfish. The boxfish's thick, triangular body
provides it with considerable inner space, yet it is capable of moving efficiently at high speeds.
Using the boxfish's design, the engineers produced a four-passenger car that gets 70 miles per
gallon.

In development now are tiny robotic flies that can move their man-made wings faster than the flies
they were modeled on. In a couple of years, they're expected to be able to hover, turn, and dive.
With a tiny camera attached to them, these flying robots could be used for many tasks, from spying
to search-and-rescue operations. A robot modeled on small lizards can climb vertical surfaces like
the real animal. It can go where humans can't... and take a camera with it.

Despite amazing advances like these, biomimetics has produced very few useable products like
Velcro. There are several reasons. Biomimetics requires the cooperation and coordination of work
among many academic and industrial areas of research. Another reason is that the process of
developing a biomimetic product is slow, time-consuming, expensive, and the outcome is uncertain.
Years of research and lots of money may come to nothing.

But the main reason biomimetics has produced so few useable products is the difficulty of copying
nature. Nature doesn't "design" a fly's wing or a lizard's foot by working toward a final goal, as an
engineer would. Instead, it pieces together countless experiments over thousands of generations.
The complexity of natural engineering makes it difficult—and expensive—to understand and pull
apart. As engineer Mark Cutkosky says, "The price that we pay for complexity is much, much
higher than the price nature pays." All the same, biomimetics may one day produce a range of
products we can't even imagine yet.

* Burr: seed or nut with a rough, spiny cover. Stickiness: tending to have things attach to
it. Fastener: device that joins two or more objects together. Hover: fly in place. Dive: move
through the air at a steep angle.