IN THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
A world full of intelligent design
Forget human ingenuity - the best source of ideas for cutting-edge technology might be in nature.
- By Sanjida O'Connell, Telegraph Group
- Published: 22:45 July 9, 2009
- Nissan's robotic car, the BR23C, mimics the bumblebees' vision and holds promise for future vehicles that can automatically avoid accidents
- Image Credit:
Forget human ingenuity - the best source of ideas for cutting-edge technology might be in nature.
We humans like to think we are pretty good at design and technology - but we often forget that Mother Nature had a head start of 3.6 million years. Now, the way that geckoes climb walls, or hummingbirds hover, is at the centre of a burgeoning industry: biomimicry, the science of "reverse-engineering" clever ideas from the natural world.
"Imitating natural systems is about trying to mimic the amazing effectiveness of ecosystems, where waste from one system is used as the nutrients for another," says Michael Pawlyn, the director of a sustainable architecture firm and one of the designers of the Eden Project in Cornwall. "Often, by applying ideas from ecosystems, you can turn problems into solutions that are better environmentally and commercially."
Here are a few examples of biomimicry at its best:
The idea sounds too good to be true: vast greenhouses-cum-power-plants that sit in the desert, producing the Namibian fog-basking beetle, which has evolved a way to gather fresh water in the parched Namib desert. In the day, its matt black shell radiates heat; during the night, it becomes slightly cooler than its surroundings, causing fog to condense on its shell. In the morning, the beetle tips itself up and lets the water trickle into its mouth.
In the larger-scale version, sea water collected from the air or pumped in from the coast evaporates at the front of a greenhouse, creating a humid environment suitable for growing crops. The water then condenses on the matt black pipes at the back of the greenhouse. Alongside sits a concentrated solar power array, which uses mirrors to concentrate the Sun's rays. That heat turns the water into steam, driving turbines and generating electricity. The system not only produces five times as much fresh water as the greenhouse needs, but has twice the energy output of other solar-powered plants.
The idea has already been tested in Tenerife, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, and Pawlyn claims it is suitable for use in Africa, India, much of the Middle East, Australia and even parts of Spain.
Dr Frank Fish, an expert on how animals move, based at the University of West Chesterfield in Pennsylvania, was looking at a sculpture of a humpback whale, when he realised the artist had put bumps on the whale's flippers. That made no sense: everyone knew that the leading edge of a wing had to be smooth and streamlined.
The gallery owner, however, assured Dr Fish that the bumps were in the right place. Intrigued, the doctor made a thorough investigation. What he discovered was that the mysterious bumps were the right shape and located in precisely the right places, to make even an animal as cumbersome as a whale extremely agile, as the bumps produce vortices that generate more lift and reduce drag.
Dr Fish has set up a firm called WhalePower, which uses this concept to design wind turbines, pumps and fans. The bumpy blades, he says, are quieter and more reliable - and produce 20 per cent more electricity a year.
Devised by Graham Wiles of the Green Business Network, the ABLE Project, based in Wakefield, near Leeds, began by involving disadvantaged people in cardboard recycling. What it evolved into, however, is a system that mirrors a natural process: the "circle of life", in which each living thing, or its waste, provides the food for another.
First, the young people involved started shredding the discarded paper and selling it as bedding for horses. Wiles then had the idea of collecting the soiled bedding and composting it in a wormery. He established a fish farm to raise Siberian sturgeon and ornamental Koi carp, feeding them on the worms.
This year, the sturgeon produced their first batch of caviar. As Pawlyn explains, the ABLE Project "demonstrates the potential to turn a waste material into a high-value product while yielding numerous social, economic and environmental benefits".
The Japanese firm Nissan recently unveiled a new micro robotic car, the BR23C, which avoids collisions by using sensors based on the bumblebee's compound eyes. With a field of vision more than 300 degrees wide, bees' eyes allow them to fly uninterrupted and to dodge any obstacle.
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 which helps the driver 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," explains Toshiyuki Andou, manager of Nissan's mobility laboratory and principal engineer on the project.
One of Pawlyn's more ambitious plans is the Community Ecology Centre, in which the building's form and function mimic the interconnectedness of the natural world.
"We wanted to create a celebratory form of architecture," he says, "which is commercially viable, links energy production and water purification, and acts as a social hub."
At the heart of the centre is a greenhouse, with tropical fruit and vegetables grown near the ceiling, where it is hotter. The produce will be served in a restaurant; the waste food will feed a wormery; the worms will be fed to tilapia, a breed of fish; and the tilapia will be served to the diners. Any rubbish will be processed by an anaerobic digester, producing biogas to heat the greenhouse and provide electricity. Meanwhile, a "living machine", designed to mimic the filtration process in wetlands, will turn the sewage into clean water.
Their names may sound like a collection of children's toys but the latest robots funded by the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, are anything but playthings. The six-legged devices developed by the RiSE project, which is presided over by Professor Mark Cutkosky of the Stanford University, are based on insects and reptiles.
The aim is to develop machines capable of walking along the ground, up walls and other surfaces. "Stickybot" looks and climbs like a gecko, using friction to adhere to smooth surfaces, while "DynoClimber" scuttles up walls like a cockroach, at speeds of 66cm/s (or 1.5 times its body length every second).
Researchers at the Bath University are also working on robots that copy insects, in this case by jumping. With their lack of muscles, insects have to rely on unleashing small amounts of energy, like flattening and releasing a spring. Using a similar system, the "Jollbot" can leap 50 centimetres into the air. The robot's creator, Rhodri Armour, hopes that an advanced version would be able to leap and bound over the Martian surface, in areas where Nasa's Mars Rover is too ungainly to tread.
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