Nature as a Model for Mimicking and Inspiration of New Technologies

Over 3.8 billion years, through evolution nature came up with many effective continually improving solutions to its challenges. Humans have always been inspired by nature capabilities in problems solving and innovation. These efforts have been intensified in recent years where systematic studies are being made towards better understanding and applying more sophisticated capabilities in this field that is increasingly being titled biomimetics. The ultimate challenge to this field is the development of humanlike robots that talk, interpret speech, walk, as well as make eye-contact and facial expressions with some capabilities that are exceeding the original model from nature. This includes flight where there is no creature that is as large, can fly as high, carry so heavy weight, fly so fast, and able to operate in extreme conditions as the aircraft and other aerospace systems. However, there are many capabilities of biological systems that are not feasible to mimic using the available technology. In this paper, the state-of-the-art of some of the developed biomimetic capabilities, potentials and challenges will be reviewed.