Look To Nature for Inspiration
Last Updated on Tuesday, 26 May 2015 01:32 Written by Albert Greenhut Tuesday, 3 February 2015 06:26
The US military is one of the biggest innovators in the world, listing its R&D budget at over $50 billion a year 1, or more 2. Those innovators are constantly looking to innovate, it is in their DNA, but many times their stumbling block is finding inspiration. One of the military’s sources for inspiration is nature. There have been reasonable uses of nature, and animals, such as carrier pigeons, Hannibal’s snake bombs, surveillance/guard dolphins and sea lions, or genetically modified mine sniffing mice, as well as absurd ones like pigeon guided missiles or cat spies.
Taking nature as inspiration has gone one step further with bio-mimicry in design. Wired.com recently reported that one of the military’s newest inventions is a water drone that looks and swims like a shark. The article makes the point that one of the best places to draw inspiration from is billions of years of evolution. Though sharks have been around for hundreds of millions of years (not quite billions, but for perspective humans have been around for around 200,000 years) they have evolved into what some proclaim as perfect predators or perfect machines. This new drone is about 5 feet long and can be operated by tether. The future applications for this seem vast.
Intercept Technology is based on the capability of copper to naturally react with atmospheric pollutants. This means that inside of an Intercept bag or container that the pollutants (found in our air including Sulfides, Hydrogen Chloride, Ozone, and Nitrous Compounds), will react with and permanently bond with copper particles that help make up the Intercept material. This cleansing reaction(s) creates an inert environment safe from corrosion and degradation. This capability was recently in the news when Paul Revere and Sam Adams’ 1795 time capsule, a copper box, was unearthed in the Boston Statehouse, the contents of which were in good condition and the outside air could not penetrate the copper box. This natural property of copper has capitalized on by the Intercept Technology, which uses a high surface area copper reacted into plastic to create a usable form of packaging that provides safe and reliable protection.
When products need to respond the vigor’s of the real world, nature can be as good a place as any to draw inspiration, especially when evolution has developed elegant designs for you.
