The New York Times published an article yesterday about the development of carbon nanotubes as an adhesive, whereby tiny man-made structures mimic the hairs on the feet of geckos. However, the article misses to note that this is a ‘biomimetic’ innovation.

While technologies such as sonar are considered biomimetic, I’d say that biomimicry is just now coming of age. The long discussed examples of gecko feet and mussel inspired adhesives are now a reality through deliberate research and innovation, rather than coincidental parallel development.

Earlier this summer, Jeff Warren and I had the opportunity to test drive the Biomimicry Guild Database and provide our friend Jeremy Faludi with some interaction and usability feedback. Why don’t you give it a test drive it yourself?!?

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See Also: Biomimicry and Mercedes,Energy-Aware Appliances,Clinton Global Initiative – Lemelson Foundation,

This entry was posted by Mike Lin on Wednesday, August 31st, 2005 at 9:37 am and is filed under Design, Environment, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.