Biomimetics

Jose s ROBIO 2006 presentation on gecko part 2 of 2

Jose s ROBIO 2006 presentation on gecko part 1 of 2

The biomimetic and bionic internet portal www.biomimetik.dk now offers its visitors a chance to browse through international peer reviewed research papers on biomimetics.

Read more by clicking here .

The paper database uses the open source Drupal module 'Bibliography Module' developed by Ron Jerome. Click here to learn more about it.

Scientists are well aware that the majority of the research papers they publish in scientific journals, usually are only read by a few colleagues and fellow specialists in the area. Thus scientists are mostly pleased when their papers reach a wider audience. However, there are situations where this does not fully apply.

I had a review paper about biomimetics and my doctoral research on locomotion in ragworms published in the journal Naturwisseschaften in July. I have just discovered that this paper has been discussed and commented upon in a blog about intelligent design (ID, the idea that living things are so complex and perfectly designed that they cannot have arisen by a random evolutionary process. Instead there must be some non-defined intelligent designer, i.e. God, behind).

During the summer, a new life science portal Life of science has been launched.
The portal covers all areas within biology, medicine and pharmacology as well as their interaction with biotechnology. It focuses on new interesting scientific findings which are overlooked or too complicated for the traditional media. Not all fascinating and curious science is published in Nature or Science. Life of science also occassionally prints longer feature articles within these fields and has so far written about biomimetics and morality from an evolutionary perspective.

The portal has been up and running for a few months now and some of the articles published so far include

The biomimetics book is a dynamic and collaborative effort to create a collection of resources about biomimetics.

In time the book will contain chapters on different aspects of biomimetics, as well as a FAQ, a knowledge base, and a protocol list.

Since the the evolution of the book is forthgoing and dynamic no more precise projections of content can yet be given.

Battlesuits, drones, clones, and androids - anything to mimic, or improve upon, nature.

All of this can be found at Wired Magazine's annual NextFest, a carnival that showcases that latest in futuristic and sometimes lifelike technology.

A Japanese company has produced a robot to function as a guard keeping burglars out of shopping malls, offices, shops, and - in the longer run - maybe private homes.

The robot is programmed to follow predefined routes, and is equipped with sensors and cameras. Upon encountering something suspicious the 1.09m robot will contact human guards via a radio, and can also send them footage.

The producer, security firm Sohgo Security Services Co., expects to have the first robots patrolling within a year.

Curiosity is important when biological organisms learn to interact with their environment.

Robots that mimic the behaviour of human babies have been built. Actually, there is now a whole litter of robot puppies playing happily along at Sony's research and development lab in Paris, France. The pups - apparently all called Aibo - are put in something that resembles a babies playground, where they are interacting with eachother, and the present toys.

This page from BIONIS (The Biomimetics Network for Industrial Sustainability) gives more links to biomimetical related institutions and companies