Posted by davidwfox on 02 Jan 2012 | Tagged as: 3D Printing, enablers
Shape of things to come – welcome to 2012!
Titled “Flight Assembled Architecture,” the live installation showcases a fleet of quadrocopters building a six meter-high tower made up of 1,500 prefabricated polystyrene foam modules.
http://www.gizmag.com/frac-flying-robots-build-6-meter-tower/20977/
Posted by davidwfox on 27 Dec 2011 | Tagged as: 3D Printing, biomimicry
One of the key enabling technologies in the realm of biomimicry is 3D Printing or “additive manufacturing“. A pointer to the future from The Economist:
THE industrial revolution of the late 18th century made possible the mass production of goods, thereby creating economies of scale which changed the economy—and society—in ways that nobody could have imagined at the time. Now a new manufacturing technology has emerged which does the opposite. Three-dimensional printing makes it as cheap to create single items as it is to produce thousands and thus undermines economies of scale. It may have as profound an impact on the world as the coming of the factory did. Continued at The Economist…
Posted by davidwfox on 26 Dec 2011 | Tagged as: biomimicry
Posted by davidwfox on 10 Dec 2011 | Tagged as: biomimicry
Treehugger reporter Jaymi Heimbuch offers a great roundup of biomimetic R&D.
There is something satisfying about the natural world telling us how to make our technology better, rather than the often-assumed other way around. This year seems to have given us a bumper crop of news stories about biomimicry innovations and we have selected some of the most interesting robots, materials, structures and strategies to highlight here. Continued at Treehugger…
Posted by davidwfox on 09 Dec 2011 | Tagged as: biomimicry, financial
Great news for this Australian developer of bio-inspired power generation systems:
SYDNEY, Nov. 30, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Ocean energy company, BioPower Systems (BPS), today announced that the Victorian Minister for Energy and Resources, the Hon. Michael O’Brien MP, has awarded the company conditional funding support of $5 million under the Sustainable Energy Pilot Demonstration Program.
The funding will be applied towards the $14 million pilot demonstration of the company’s 250kW bioWAVE ocean wave energy system at a grid-connected site near Port Fairy, Victoria.
Posted by davidwfox on 08 Dec 2011 | Tagged as: biomimicry, liveable cities
Another good post in FastCompany’s Biomimicry – Nature of Innovation series:
When city services can autonomously go online and digest information from the cloud, they can reach a level of performance never before seen. First up, water systems that automatically know when it will rain and react accordingly. Continued at FastCompany.
Posted by davidwfox on 21 Oct 2011 | Tagged as: biomimicry, events
A great presentation by Biomimicry3.8 co-founder Dr Dayna Baumeister. Enjoy! http://www.bioneerslive.org/VOD/VOD14/vod1602.html
Life’s Operating Manual :
Envision what our world would and could look like if we actually started reading and following the directions contained in “Life’s Operating Manual.” Co-founder with Janine Benyus of the Biomimicry Guild and Biomimicry Institute, Dayna Baumeister provides an eagle’s-eye view of biomimicry breakthroughs using ecological design and nature-inspired technologies that emulate nature’s profound design sophistication. She has worked in the field of biomimicry with Janine Benyus since 1998 and designed and teaches the world’s first Biomimicry Professional Certification Program.
About the Presenter:
Dayna Baumeister has worked in the field of biomimicry with Janine Benyus since 1998 as a business catalyst, educator, researcher, and design consultant. Together they founded the Biomimicry Guild, The Biomimicry Institute, and Biomimicry3.8, collectively fertilizing the movement of biomimicry as an innovative practice and philosophy to meet the world’s sustainability challenges. Dayna also designed and teaches the world’s first Biomimicry Professional Certification Program and compiled over a decade of experience into the Biomimicry Resource Handbook: A Seed Bank of Knowledge and Best Practices (2011). (www.biomimicry.net)
Posted by davidwfox on 04 Oct 2011 | Tagged as: biomimicry
It’s always heartening to report on big business taking note of biomimicry. DOW – yes, the DOW, the granddaddy chemical company – is sponsoring a series of vignettes on Fast Company http://www.fastcompany.com/biomimicry. Check out this short interview with Janine Benyus: http://www.fastcompany.com/biomimicry/janine-benyus-biomimicry-is-innovation-inspired-by-nature.
This interview is part of a special EarthSky series Biomimicry: Nature of Innovation produced in partnership with Fast Company and sponsored by Dow.
Posted by davidwfox on 24 Sep 2011 | Tagged as: biomimicry
Cambridge, Mass. – September 21, 2011 – After a rain, the cupped leaf of a pitcher plant becomes a virtually frictionless surface. Sweet-smelling and elegant, the carnivore attracts ants, spiders, and even little frogs. One by one, they slide to their doom.
Adopting the plant’s slick strategy, a group of applied scientists at Harvard have created a material that repels just about any type of liquid, including blood and oil, and does so even under harsh conditions like high pressure and freezing temperatures.
Continued at http://harvard.edu/news-events
Posted by davidwfox on 23 Sep 2011 | Tagged as: biomimicry
This week Janine Benyus was a panelist at the ‘Form and Function: Designing for Humanity’ talk at the Clinton Global Initiative. Interviews via Brian Merchant at TreeHugger:
Benyus agreed to sit down for an interview, and she discussed projects like bullet trains modeled after bird’s beaks and wind farms designed to mimic schools of fish. She also explained how biomimicry should inspire conservation, and why we might see biomimetic 3-D printing in the next 20 years. Watch now at treehugger.com
Additional coverage at: smartplanet.com
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