Biomimetics & Natural Technologies

The concept of biomimicry is very old (the Chinese wanted to make artificial silk 3 000 years ago; Daedalus' wings was one of the early design failures) but the implementation is gathering momentum only recently because the science base can cope with the advanced techniques and our civilisation is in ever increasing need of sympathetic technology.

web page: http://www.bath.ac.uk/mech-eng/biomimetics/projects/

Biomimetics at Bath is expanding quickly. Here are the ones so far:
Jumping robots
Adaptive fabrics
Automatic Assembly
Mimicking social insect building
TRIZ