仿生設計-生物模擬科技
Biomimetic Design

The police officers were drenched with sweat.
警察的汗水濕透了衣服。

Leaves with dew drops glisten in the sunlight.
沾了露水的葉面在陽光下閃閃發光。

The device was designed to channel water away from the buildings.
這個裝置的設計是為了把水引離建築物。

The teacher is conducting a vigorous class debate.
老師正在進行一個激烈的課堂辯論。

Sculptors need agile hands to achieve a masterpiece.
雕刻家需要一雙靈活的手來完成一項偉大的創作。

They hold the flag aloft and show their anger.
他們高舉旗幟表達憤怒。

Robotic sweepers are widely used in every household.
掃地機器人普遍使用於每個家庭。

The new washing machine is more maneuverable than the previous models.
新款的洗衣機比舊款更好操作。

All the banks in Taiwan install surveillance cameras.
全台灣的銀行都有裝設監視器。

I had two minuscule pieces of bread for my lunch.
我中午只吃了兩小塊麵包。

Biomimetic Design

What has fins like a whale, skin like a lizard, and eyes like a moth? The future of engineering. Andrew Parker, an evolutionary biologist, knelt in the baking red sand of the Australian Outback just south of Alice Springs and eased the right hind leg of a thorny devil into a dish of water.

“Its back is completely drenched!” Sure enough, after 30 seconds, water from the dish had whisked up the lizard’s leg and was glistening all over its prickly hide. In a few seconds more water reached its mouth, and the lizard began to smack its jaws with evident satisfaction. It was, in essence, drinking through its foot. Given more time, the thorny devil can perform this same conjuring trick on a patch of damp sand—a vital competitive advantage in the desert. Parker had come here to discover precisely how it does this, not from purely biological interest, but with a concrete purpose in mind: to make a thorny devil-inspired device that will help people collect lifesaving water in the desert. “The water’s spreading out incredibly fast!” he said, as drops from his eyedropper fell onto the lizard’s back and vanished, like magic. “Its skin is far more hydrophobic than I thought; there may well be hidden capillaries, channeling the water into the mouth.”

Parker’s work is only a small part of an increasingly vigorous, global biomimetics movement. Engineers in Bath, England, and West Chester, Pennsylvania, are pondering the bumps on the leading edges of humpback whale flukes to learn how to make airplane wings for more agile flight. In Berlin, Germany, the fingerlike primary feathers of raptors are inspiring engineers to develop wings that change shape aloft in order to reduce drag and increase fuel efficiency. Architects in Zimbabwe are studying how termites regulate temperature, humidity, and airflow in their mounds in order to build more comfortable buildings, while Japanese medical researchers are reducing the pain of an injection by using hypodermic needles edged with tiny serrations, like those on a mosquito’s proboscis, minimizing nerve stimulation.

Ronald Fearing, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, has taken on one of the biggest challenges of all: to create a miniature robotic fly that is swift, small, and maneuverable enough for use in surveillance or search-and-rescue operations. Fearing made his own, one of which he held up with tweezers for me to see, a gossamer wand some 11 millimeters long and not much thicker than a cat’s whisker. Fearing has been forced to manufacture many of the other minute components of his fly in the same way, using a micro-machining laser and a rapid prototyping system that allows him to design his minuscule parts in a computer, automatically cut and cure them overnight, and assemble them by hand the next day under a microscope.