"A Stickybot is a state-of-the-art robotic lizard that can scale smooth surfaces like walls and windows with the ease of Spiderman. Products that may make your life easier in the not-too-distant future. The Pentagon hopes to someday use the gecko-inspired device as a "spy in the sky" to watch over enemy territory"
-ABC News
-ABC News
Above:
Close-up of a gecko foot, showing the pads that bear microscopic branched elastic hairs that use atomic-scale forces to grip surfaces. Source: Georgia Tech Research
This collabarative success was shared between Prof. Cutkosky and his team at Stanford University and John Ho Lee and R. Full, Professor of Integrative Biology of The University of California, Berkeley.
Professor Full has studied the design principles behind nature since becoming intrigued by the velcro of the cockle-burs plant that clung to his dog's fur; and has since developed a separate department at UC Berkeley, learning from the natural world, called the Center for Interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research. Bringing together engineers, designers, biologists and scientists from different fields to work together to develop progress in this fast moving field.
Left: The result of collaborative success across two fields with the Stickybot.
Professor Full goes on to state that Bio-mimicry is not however as simple as it sounds. There is more to it than just copying nature. Currently the natural world has been developing and innovating itself for the past 3.6 Billion years. Nature knows what works and what doesn't. Full claims: "Bio-mimicry is the study of systems and elements in nature, and adapting them to solve modern, human problems...the problem is that evolution does not function on an "optimizing principles" rather it runs on a "just good enough" concept, as this is all it needs. However, this is different from how we consider design in engineering, hence the problem. To evolve you just need to survive, we can take the general principles and adapt them for our own specific needs."
So with collaborative success, the bio-mimicry concept can run and run. Who knows what bio-inspired design limits might hold?