We need to take a lesson from nature
A couple of months ago, I took a class at university called “Biomimicry”. You’re probably wondering, what does that even mean? I had the same question.
Biomimicry is the design and production of materials, structures, and systems that are inspired on biological entities and processes.
Some of the examples that the lecturer introduced during this class have stayed with me and changed the way I view and interact with nature. It’s time to share…
You’ve probably heard of the new home gadgets that answer all our questions, play music, or research the internet without even lifting a finger. Have you ever wondered how these smart home devices can hear us, and more importantly how do they know where our voice is coming from? The answer is very simple, it is based in the biological principle that rules mammalian hearing.
Sound that is emitted from a source reaches our ears at slightly different times, due to be 20cm distance that separates both ears. Neurons connected to each ear work as coincidence detectors. This means that they are triggered when sound reaches an ear and fire until it reaches the second ear. When both neurons triggers overlap, the time difference indicates the direction the sound is coming from and the relative distance of the source.
Engineering researchers have been able to mimic this principle reaching nanometre scale accuracy! The cross-correlation of sound reaching two receptors at different times has allowed them to create accurate hearing aids, directional microphones and sound localisation in robots like Alexa!
This really amazes me… How on earth do doctors manage to look at what is happening inside our arteries! How do they know if the walls are ‘healthy’ or covered in cholesterol? Well, it all started with fish…
Some fish are ‘swimming dipoles’, this means that they create an electric field around their body. The head is positively charged and the tail is negatively charged, making electrons move towards the positive head away from the tail. This movement of electrons creates electric currents!
When something comes close to the fish it will create changes in the electric field. A nearby object will create a positive high amplitude perturbation, whereas a far-away object will create a negative low amplitude perturbation. Fish navigate and locate objects around them by looking at the changes in their electric field.
But, how does this serve our arteries?
When a catheter is inserted in a blood vessel and generates an electric field, healthy/unhealthy walls cause different perturbations. Imperfections along the wall can be located as the catheter moves in the vessel. This medical breakthrough was elemental in the prevention of obstruction of blood flow.
Imagine the most colourful shadow palette, imagine the blues, pinks, browns… Would you believe me if I said it did not contain any pigment?
Well… the same happens with butterflies. They have beautiful wings, but not a single pigment molecule in them. Where do they get their colour from? Butterfly wings are built by the superposition of chitin plates (think of it as bricks in a building wall). What makes these chitin plates special is the fact that depending on their overlapping structure, they absorb different wavelengths of light, giving the wings their unique colour. For example, thick plates produce red while thin plates produce blue.
Pigments and dyes are molecules that produce colors by the selective absorption and reflection of specific wavelengths. Structural colors, on the other hand, rely exclusively on the shape of the material and not its chemical properties
The cosmetics that use these structural colours use different layers of fibrous substances such as mica, silica and beads (very similar to the butterfly’s chitin plates) to give their products unique and long-lasting colour.
Note: Butterflies are not used to create these cosmetics. To the best of my knowledge –the structure of their wings is replicated by generating artificial molecules that mimic the structural configuration of chitin.
I could not write an article about nature and skip this chapter. Artificial intelligence is shaping the 21st century in ways we have not understood yet. But where did it all begin? The answer is straightforward, it started with your eyes.
Human vision is structured in hierarchical layers, the first layers allows us to differentiate colours, then background from foreground finally identify a dog or a cat. This is obviously an oversimplification, the first layer in the human visual system is in charge of identifying the orientation of each edge, the second layer performs position and size invariance, and so on… If I translate this into images, the visual pathway would look like this:
Pixels=> edges => curves => conjunctions => human/dog /cat face
A deep neural network (DNN) is an artificial neural network (ANN) with multiple layers between the input and output.
These artificial networks rely solely on the hierarchical structure found in nature. Biologically inspired models mimic the organisation of the first few stages of the human visual pathways. For example, the HMAX Deep Neural Network model uses this concept for rapid object recognition. It tries to mimic the layers and pathways that occur in the first milliseconds of human visual processing.
Who said we couldn’t compete with machines?
Orthopaedics and amputee limb reconstruction research has taken an unexpected turn and is now looking into larvae bone structure. Or lack thereof…
In order to improve the experience that amputees have with exoskeleton limbs; bioengineers are looking at organisms that do not contain rigid components, such as larvae. These insects are bone free and without articulations and have easily reconfigurable structures. They will allow for a more seamless experience when it comes to adhering devices to our bodies. Welcome to the world of Soft-Robotics!
A promising outcome of the Soft-Robotics research field is greatly inspired by the caterpillar rolling motion. With not a single bone in their body, how do they manage to create enough momentum to roll? These clever little creatures use antagonistic ground forces to roll and displace themselves. The quick change in body conformation occurs within 100ms and generates a linear velocity over 0.2ms. The soft robots inspired by the caterpillar are looking to be used in fire scenarios, where they could enter a building and release water.
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