It’s not just poets who get inspired by nature—innovators do too. We take a look at some technological breakthroughs that owe their existence to Mother Nature.

Scientists, musicians, artists and philosophers, have all acknowledged the role nature has played in their work. But while ‘artistic’ or ‘creative’ pursuits are often considered to have a close relationship with nature, technology is not. In fact, for some reason, technology is often seen as being at odds with nature.

Technology is often misunderstood—and condemned—as the quest to conquer or bypass nature. But it is the magnificence and extreme intelligence of nature and the perfection achieved over eons of evolution that inspires and pushes technologists to keep innovating. Indeed, numerous advancements in IT have been inspired by nature.

“In the information technology space, there have been many technologies and innovations that were biologically-inspired, but the greatest are in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and all its branches, including expert systems, neural networks, fuzzy logic, and related mathematical optimisation algorithms that include genetic algorithms and many others,” asserts Dr Yoseph Bar-Cohen, a senior research scientist and group supervisor at NASA, who was named by BusinessWeek as one of the five people pushing technology’s boundaries in 2003.

Dr Matthew T. Mason, director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, and professor of computer science and robotics at the university, agrees: “The entire field of robotics is inspired by nature: building machines inspired by human beings, or by animals. The central idea is that the capabilities we see in people might be constructed out of ordinary stuff such as aluminium, silicon and plastic.”

The case is no different in chip design and fabrication, self-learning software, neural networks, cybernetics, systems engineering, electronic components, sensors, user interfaces, data mining, machine learning, photonics and innumerable other aspects of IT.

In fact, bionics, also known as bio-mimicry or biomimetics, is the application of insights gained from nature to technology, and is becoming an organised field of study and practice at many universities and R&D labs. Not surprisingly, a number of IT industry majors have not just engineers, but also biologists, anthropologists, genealogists and experts from many other disciplines in their R&D teams.

Here is a collection of some very recent examples of nature-inspired breakthroughs in IT. All of which prove that innovation is, after all, natural!
‘Always On’ displays for cell phones, courtesy butterflies and peacocks

The radiant colours on the wings of butterflies and the plumage of peacocks have inspired not just pages of poetry but also an exciting, highly-reflective display technology for mobile phones. The colours of a butterfly or a peacock are ‘always on’, round the clock. They do not cause a glare nor black out in the sunshine, and never lose their lustre. This is because their highly-evolved architecture produces colour by allowing light to interfere with itself. The structures on the wing reflect light, so that specific wavelengths interfere with each other to create extremely pure and sharp colours.

Inspired by this, the team at Iridigm Display Corporation developed and patented the Interferometric Modulator (IMOD) display technology a few years ago. Each pixel in an IMOD display is represented by a micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) around 10-100 microns in size. Each of these comprises a reflective membrane suspended below a thin film stack on a glass substrate. As a white paper released by QUALCOMM explains, “When a bias voltage holds the reflective membrane in the open state, the sub-pixel reflects a particular colour. When the applied voltage pulls the reflective membrane into a collapsed state, all visible light is absorbed, making the element black. To create a flat-panel display, many elements are grouped together as pixels or sub-pixels. Varying voltage across the display’s elements creates rich, detailed imagery.”
A property called hysteresis allows IMOD elements to remain stable in open or collapsed state till explicitly changed. This bi-stable behaviour averts the need for constant refreshing in active matrix displays, thus reducing power consumption.

Impressed by the technology, QUALCOMM, a leader in the mobile technologies and products space bought over Iridigm for around $170 million. IMOD is expected to lead the next generation of flat-panel displays in performance and power-savings.
In May 2007, QUALCOMM announced that Ubixon, an emerging Korean player in the ubiquitous portable consumer devices market will be the first to integrate QUALCOMM’s next generation MEMS displays into their Bluetooth stereo headset products.

Nature teaches IBM to cool IT!

One of the side effects of cramming more and more functionality into smaller chips is the excessive heat generated by the components, which in turn reduces the reliability and performance of chips and processors. Traditionally, this has been overcome using heat sinks and fans, but these are effective only to a certain extent. In October 2006, IBM announced a breakthrough inspired completely by nature, to solve this ‘hot’ problem!

In today’s cooling technology, the space between the chip and the heat sink is jam-packed with a particle-filled paste that allows the chip and/or the heat sink to expand or contract at varying temperatures. However, the paste is so tightly packed that there is always the risk of the chip cracking.

Researchers at IBM’s Zurich lab were sharp enough to learn the art of channelling the pressure just as nature does it—through a complex network of veins connecting roots and leaves in plants, as also in the human circulatory system. They developed a chip cap with a sophisticated tree-like network of micro-sized channels. When pressure is applied, the paste spreads uniformly through these veins, reducing the pressure but increasing heat transport by over 10 times, as compared to conventional methods.

Thinkpad users cool down on owls’ wings!

In May this year, Lenovo announced two new ThinkPad notebook models that feature a major processor upgrade, better mobility features and an improved cooling system, among other features. One of the major issues in processors is the heat generated as more and more transistors get packed into smaller footprints. And if the processor gets hot, so does the laptop, and consequently, so do laps, making things rather uncomfortable for users! Manufacturers fit fans in the notebooks to cool the processors, but these fans tend to be noisy.

Lenovo took a leaf out of nature’s notebook to design a new cooling system. The company was inspired by how the owl could fly swiftly but silently while descending on a prey, and they designed fan blades based on the structure of an owl’s wings. Compared to earlier models, the new system reduces surface temperature by up to 10 per cent and the noise level by three decibels.
The company ought to consider donating a share of the profits earned from this model to some owl conservation society!

Inducing ‘biodiversity’ into computer systems

In a very recent podcast recorded by Jason Lopez for PodTech, Nina Taft, an Intel researcher, explains how her research in systems security is inspired by nature. Corporations have hundreds, even thousands of people working for them. And most of them use computers. Security is always an issue. Corporations tackle this by setting up network security systems and prescribing security configurations for all their employees. There is so much uniformity that if a person breaks into one computer, it becomes rather simple to do the same across any number of them.

While wondering how to solve this problem, Taft read an article on how biodiversity and the fact that each organism is different, controls the spread of diseases to a certain extent – biodiversity actually makes some organisms more resistant than others to some viruses. So, her team is now exploring the possibilities of ‘adding biodiversity’ to computers. They are looking at personalised security, where the security configurations vary from machine to machine, and are tailor-made for each computer depending on the user’s behaviour – how long he or she uses the computer, the programs installed on it, etc. This makes it difficult to crack these systems, as each is different.

Next generation chip technology: let it snow, let it snow…

The next generation of computer chips might be manufactured using a kind of self-assembling nanotechnology learnt from nature. IBM plans to employ the pattern-creating process nature uses to form seashells and snowflakes to form trillions of holes around the nanoscale wires packed inside computer chips, creating insulating vacuum space between these tightly-packed wires. This will help electrical signals to flow 35 per cent faster, and chips are likely to consume 15 per cent less energy compared to existing technologies.

The IBM press release says: “The self-assembly process has already been integrated with IBM’s state-of-the-art manufacturing line in East Fishkill, New York and is expected to be fully incorporated in IBM’s manufacturing lines and used in chips in 2009. The chips will be used in IBM’s server product lines and thereafter for chips IBM builds for other companies.”
Interestingly, this is the first time a company has been able to create a self-assembled polymer that can be used in the mass manufacturing of chips. As IBM says, it has moved self-assembly from the lab to the fab!

Photonic leaps inspired by nature

Here’s another story of butterflies and technologists! Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, studied the patterns in the wings of a species of butterfly called the Morpho Peleides and found that the structural arrangement of its units could well be a two-dimensional photonic crystal.

They replicated the wing structure with an atomic layer deposition of alumina. As they varied the thickness of the coating, they found that different colours were reflected. And the replica retained the optical properties even after the wing was removed, which proved that the optical properties arose due to the structural patterns in the wing, and not because of the material. These patterns could replicate the functions of two important components in photonic integrated circuits (ICs).
Photonic ICs help process information in terms of light (photonics) rather than electrons, thereby making very high-bandwidth, high-speed fibre optic communications and computing possible. However, the fabrication of photonic ICs has been rather expensive till date, using traditional lithographic techniques. Therefore, the ability to economically fabricate reproducible photonic ICs might mean a major leap for telecommunications and IT. That is precisely what this finding about the wing structure of the Morpho Peleides might facilitate. Replicating a biological system would not only help develop complex structures, but would also prove to be very cost-effective, as the wings can provide scales to fabricate millions of integrated circuits.

Over the past few years, researchers have also shown how other biological structures derived from butterflies, beetle, sea mice, etc, can be used to replicate photonics-related structures. One notable example is the work by Dr Luca Plattner and Dr Greg Parker (who is known for developing the first photonic crystal), in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, around two years ago. Inspired by the optical properties of a nanostructure that forms the wings of a species of tropical butterfly called Morpho Rhetenor, Dr Plattner managed to fabricate optical structures to reproduce brilliant hues, such as those on a butterfly’s wings, using common silicon-based materials and processes.

Biomorphic robots

While the whole field of robotics itself is undeniably inspired by the way animals (and humans) move and think, there is a specialised subset of robotics known as biomorphic robotics. This involves closely studying biological systems and building robots that mimic these techniques and functions. As early as 1999, Dr Kumar Ramohalli of the University of Arizona won recognition from NASA for his work on BiRoDs or biomorphic robots with distributed power.
Inspired by nature, the construction of a BiRoD is so simple that it does not have gears or other complex mechanical systems. It is built using ‘muscles’ made of wires and springs, which are connected to a battery. The current flowing through the ‘muscle’ wires causes their molecules to rearrange themselves in a smaller space, making them contract mechanically—just like real muscles do. Reaction time is very low even while the BiRoDs are extremely strong. Ramohalli conceptualised the BiRoD as an aid for space exploration.

As Ramohalli’s students work on the BiRoD, many more innovations such as chemical energy storage and mechanical conversion, sensors, etc, all inspired by nature, have been built into the biomorphic robot. A recent advance is in the area of diagnostics and real-time on-board repair capability. The BiRoD is now capable of travelling on larger spacecrafts, looking for existing and potential faults. It can do a quick check and proceed to fix the troublesome components, if the mission controllers approve.

As nature never ceases to inspire roboteers, there is no dearth of biomorphic robots. In fact, the final day of this year’s JavaOne conference was a veritable ‘toy show’ with quite a few interesting robots displayed. Perhaps the most interesting of these was the Robosapien, a robot that was advertised as believing itself to be a human! It could speak, dance, and… burp! The Robosapien is a biomorphic robot designed by Mark Tilden, and produced by WowWee. The makers of the Robosapien have used Java technology with LCD display, sensors, motors, accessible APIs, USB ports, etc, to make the robot’s movements customisable. It can also be controlled using a remote control.

Perhaps Sun’s Bernard Traversat did mean it when he danced to ‘I Will Survive’ with three Robosapiens!

Learning from ants

Have you ever wondered how an army of ants manages its affairs? Thousands of ants cluster together, walk in disciplined single file, carry morsels of food, form a ‘live’ bridge, and achieve many more marvels of coordination.

As parallel and distributed computing paradigms like grid computing, peer-to-peer sharing, and multicasting gain popularity, the size and complexity of computing systems and the cost of managing these networks are also growing. In their search for simpler and less expensive management techniques, computer scientists are turning to nature for answers. They are studying how groups manage themselves naturally, how every member of a collective or swarm coordinates with itself and with the environment, all with the least effort.

A deeper understanding of group behaviour would result in better algorithms and techniques for optimisation and management of dynamic, multi-objective, constrained environments, distributed computing, data clustering, graph partitioning and decision-making, as well as ‘wise’ applications in domains ranging from control systems, power systems, bioinformatics, business and finance to supply-chain management, transportation systems and others.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has, in fact, been regularly conducting an annual Swarm Intelligence Symposium since 2003.