Biomimetics Learning from Nature

Humans have always been fascinated by nature and have constantly made efforts to mimic it. Rapid advancements in science and technology have now made him to act beyond rather than just mimicking nature. He has now begun to understand and implement nature’s principles like never before. By adapting mechanisms and capabilities from nature, scientific approaches have helped him to understand the related phenomena in order to engineer novel devices and design techniques to improve their capability. This field is now called as biomimetics or bio-inspired technology. The term biomimetics is derived from bios meaning life and mimesis meaning to imitate. While some of nature’s designs can be copied, there are many ideas that are best adapted if they are to serve as an inspiration using man made capabilities. There are many characteristics that can uniquely identify a biomimetic mechanism and a major characteristic is to function autonomously in a complex environment, being adaptable to unpredictable changes and to perform multifunctional tasks. Some of the major benefits of biomimetics include the development of dust free materials taking inspiration from the lotus effect, photovoltaic cells that have been developed by studying the photosynthesis mechanism of bacteria, airplanes constructed mimicking the dragonfly and hummingbird to name a few. This book is a compilation of knowledge of several authors who have contributed in various aspects of bio inspired technology. It tends to bring together the most recent advances and applications in the field of biomimetics. The book is divided into twenty five chapters.