Learning from Nature: How to Save Energy?

There are more and more technologies that mimic the way insects, plants and animals overcome "engineering" problems: the stable wing in aeroplanes, Velcro and self-cleaning paint are all such examples of simple devices based on natural inspiration.

But a recent study looks at nature for inspiration on how to reduce our dependence on energy. Professor Julian Vincent from the University of Bath who led the research observed that 70 percent of man-made technologies go into a certain kind of vicious circle: in order to solve a more and more difficult problem their energy consumption goes from the roof. On the other hand only 5 percent of natural "machines" use energy similarly.

Instead of using the same structure and applying it more forcefully, insects, plants, birds and mammals incorporate the solution to the problem in their structure and organization of their body parts and behavior. The analysis showed that there is only a 12 per cent similarity in the way biology and technology solves the problems they are faced with.

"An example might be a hammer," said Professor Vincent. "A man-made hammer has a very heavy head, so that it is heavy to carry around and lift but can do a lot of work with one hit. It relies on inertia.
But the woodpecker's hammer, its head, relies on speed. It is very light to carry around, and functions rather like a whip, with the heavier body moving a small amount, and the lighter head, on its long neck, moving much faster.
They can each deliver the same amount of impact energy, but they do it in a very different way."

The Centre for Biomimetic and Natural Technologies at the University of Bath wants to extend this principle to more advanced engineering challenges. Researchers are currently looking for inspiration at the desert cockroach in the attempt to develop a new kind of dehumidifier technology, at the insect sense organs for structural health monitoring, and - the most incredible, I think - at the egg-laying organ of a wood-wasp for a new type of steerable endoscope!

"Evolution has sculpted animals, insects and plants to produce incredibly efficient machines that carry out a range of impressive engineering feats," said Vincent. "From the way desert cockroaches gather water to the way wasps bore a hole into a tree, nature has developed a myriad of ways of solving difficult problems. By better understanding the way in which biology defines and solves technical problems, we can develop new approaches that could significantly reduce our dependence on energy. It is likely that we have similar technologies to nature - it's just that we use them in a particularly unintelligent way. Exactly how much energy we could save is not yet clear, but our research suggests that the potential is certainly there to be exploited."