Even as human-caused climate change threatens the environment, nature continues to inspire our technological advancement.
“The solutions that are provided by nature have evolved for billions of years and tested repeatedly every day since the beginning of time,” University of Edinburgh researcher Evripidis Gkanias said.
Gkanias has a special interest in how nature can educate artificial intelligence.
Photo: Reuters
“Human creativity might be fascinating, but it cannot reach nature’s robustness — and engineers know that,” he said.
From compasses mimicking insect eyes to forest firefighting robots that behave like vines, here is a selection of this year’s nature-based technology.
Some insects — such as ants and bees — navigate visually based on the intensity and polarization of sunlight, thus using the sun’s position as a reference point. Researchers replicated their eye structure to construct a compass capable of estimating the sun’s location in the sky, even on cloudy days.
Common compasses rely on Earth’s weak magnetic field to navigate, which is easily disturbed by noise from electronics.
A prototype of the light-detecting compass is “already working great,” said Gkanias, who led the study published in Communications Engineering.
“With the appropriate funding, this could easily be transformed into a more compact and lightweight product” freely available, he added.
With a little further tweaking, the insect compass could work on any planet where a big celestial light source is visible.
Fabric inspired by the silky threads of a spider web and capable of collecting drinking water from morning mist could soon play an important role in regions affected by water scarcity.
The artificial threads draw from the feather-legged spider, whose intricate “spindle-knots” allow large water droplets to move and collect on its web.
Once the material can be mass produced, the water harvested could reach a “considerable scale for real application,” said Zheng Yongmei (鄭?梅), a coauthor of the study published in Advanced Functional Materials.
Animals are not the only source of inspiration from nature.
Scientists have created an inflatable robot that “grows” in the direction of light or heat, in the same way vines creep up a wall or across a forest floor. The about 2m-long tubular robot can steer itself using fluid-filled pouches rather than costly electronics.
In time, the robots could find hot spots and deliver fire suppression agents, researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara say.
“These robots are slow, but that is OK for fighting smoldering fires, such as peat fires, which can be a major source of carbon emissions,” coauthor Charles Xiao said.
Before the robots can climb the terrain, they need to be more heat-resistant and agile.
Scientists at the Unconventional Computing Laboratory at the University of the West of England in Bristol have found a way to use slimy kombucha mats — produced by yeast and bacteria during the fermenting of the popular tea-based drink — to create “kombucha electronics.”
The scientists printed electrical circuits onto dried mats that were capable of illuminating small LED lights.
Dry kombucha mats share properties of textiles or even leather, but they are sustainable and biodegradable, and can even be immersed in water for days without being destroyed, the authors said.
“Kombucha wearables could potentially incorporate sensors and electronics within the material itself, providing a seamless and unobtrusive integration of technology with the human body,” such as for heart monitors or step-trackers, lead author and laboratory director Andrew Adamatzky said.
The mats are lighter, cheaper and more flexible than plastic, but the authors caution that durability and mass production remain significant obstacles.
Pangolins resemble a cross between a pine cone and an anteater. The soft-bodied mammals, covered in reptilian scales, are known to curl up in a ball to protect themselves against predators.
Now, a tiny robot might adapt that same design for potentially lifesaving work, a study published in Nature Communications showed.
It is intended to roll through our digestive tracts before unfurling and delivering medicine or stopping internal bleeding in hard-to-reach parts of the human body.
Lead author Soon Ren Hao of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems was watching a YouTube video when he “stumbled across the animal and saw it was a good fit.”
Soon needed a soft material that would not cause harm inside the human body, with the advantages of a hard material that could, for example, conduct electricity. The Pangolin’s unique structure was perfect.
The tiny robots are still in their initial stages, but they could be made for as little as 10 euros (US$11.03) each.
“Looking to nature to solve these kinds of problems is natural,” Soon said. “Every single design part of an animal serves a particular function. It’s very elegant.”
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort