Solving problems using nature’s SOLUTIONS
IMAGINE YOU WORKED for an airport security company and a mechanical engineer (and fluid dynamicist) said to you, ‘You should stick this dog nose that I made on a 3D printer on to the front of your bomb detector.’
If the engineer in question was Matthew Staymates, of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the US, you would do well to accept his offer. Staymates and his collaborators have synthesised an artificial dog nose that improved the odorant-detection capability of a commercially available explosives detector 16-fold when used in ‘active sniffing’ mode. So, this remarkably effective change in design was based not only on the structure of a dog’s nose, but also on how it uses it. This example beautifully illustrates the youngish design philosophy and approach known as ‘biomimicry’ – sometimes ‘biomimetics’ or ‘bioinspiration’, though the latter in fact refers to a slightly different process.
According to BiomimicrySA (a regional network of The Biomimicry Institute), biomimicry is ‘the practice of learning from and emulating nature’s genius.’ Put into practical terms, biomimicry practitioners (or biomimics) develop design solutions that are based on structures or systems observed in
