How to invent less polluting and less energy-consuming buildings, vehicles, robots? More and more scientists think that we should draw inspiration from nature This is the principle of biomimicry.
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Biomim’expo, a fair devoted to biomimicry is being held on Tuesday 23 and Wednesday 24 October at the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie in Paris and we can discover, for example, why the skeletons of dinosaurs are a source of inspiration for architects. Like that, from the outset, the connection is not obvious but it is because the bones of dinosaurs are naturally designed to support heavy loads while remaining as light as possible, otherwise the dinosaurs would never have been able to move . This is why today, engineers are inspired by it to build ultra-light building frames or ultra-resistant pulleys.
It’s not just dinosaurs that inspire engineers. There was also
the kingfisher. This fast bird that dives to catch fish inspired the aerodynamic shape of the Shinkansen, the Japanese TGV. Another example, the mosquito’s proboscis has inspired painless syringes because mosquito bites are generally not felt. In the 1950s, burdock, a plant that clings to clothing, inspired Velcro in 1952. Closer to home, the silent flight of owls is studied to build less noisy wind turbines. There are hundreds of such examples and it’s all called biomimicry.
Nature is well made and human beings do not always manage to compete in terms of ingenuity. In any case, plants, animals, bacteria, spontaneously optimize resources and energy. They are performance champions. But it must be said that nature and living things on Earth have an adaptation experience of more than three billion years behind them.
This is why today in France, explains Kalina Raskin, director of the Center for Studies and Expertise in Biomimicry (Ceebios), more than 250 public research teams and 150 companies are already experimenting with this biomimicry approach.