Insect compasses, fire-fighting vines to scaly robots, here are 2023's nature-inspired tech
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," said Evripidis Gkanias, a University of Edinburgh researcher.
Gkanias has a special interest in how nature can educate artificial intelligence.
"Human creativity might be fascinating, but it cannot reach nature's robustness -- and engineers know that," he told AFP.
From compasses mimicking insect eyes to forest fire-fighting robots that behave like vines, here's a selection of this year's nature-based technology.
- Insect compass -
Some insects -- such as ants and bees -- navigate visually based on the intensity and polarisation 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.
And with a little further tweaking, the insect compass could work on any planet where a big celestial light source is visible.
- Water-collecting webs -
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 suffering water scarcity.
The artificial threads
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