Latest news with #biomimicry
CBS News
4 days ago
- General
- CBS News
Architect Eugene Tssui draws inspiration from nature to revolutionize sustainable design
For architect and environmental activist Eugene Tssui, the future of sustainable design starts with a return to nature and a radical shift in mindset. "The environment is our home, and our home is dying," Tssui said. "We need to address that in a way where all of us need to change the way we think, and live, and behave." Known for his unconventional, biomimicry-inspired designs, Tssui has completed multiple residential projects across the Bay Area, each emphasizing ecological harmony and renewable energy. One of his latest efforts, The Sky Park Arch, will be Emeryville's first zero-energy building — a milestone in his ongoing mission to fuse architecture with nature's principles. "Architecture accounts for at least 45 percent of the world's toxic pollution," Tssui said. "And it's a shame that architects aren't a voice for letting that be known." Tssui, recently named Emeryville's 2025 Architect/Artist in Residence, sees architecture not just as a profession but as a platform for change. His design philosophy draws heavily from the natural world, where he believes the answers to many environmental challenges already exist. "The electric eel can create 600 volts of energy instantaneously just through its musculature, just through the electro nerve system inside of its body," he said. "I'm thinking now, if we knew how to biologically create electricity, it would revolutionize the world. We could have electricity that doesn't pollute at all." He argues that modern architecture still relies too heavily on outdated, industrial-age methods, failing to consider the innovations inherent in biology. "All of these miracles and secrets actually occur in nature that we are not even investigating," Tssui said. "And they could just revolutionize the way we think about energy." Tssui's work continues to challenge the conventional boundaries of design, pushing toward a vision of architecture that not only serves humanity but heals the planet. Because for Tssui, conserving energy isn't just a goal. It's the fuel behind his life's work.
Entrepreneur
30-05-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Nature Already Solved It: How Biomimicry Is Shaping the Future of Technology
At Clone, a pioneering robotics company headquartered in Poland and California, Wiktoria Kruk, Vice President of Biomechanics & Design, is spearheading a movement that fuses art, biology, and engineering into a new era of technological development—biomimicry. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. In a world driven by relentless innovation, the most revolutionary ideas are often rooted in the ancient intelligence of the natural world. At Clone, a pioneering robotics company headquartered in Poland and California, Wiktoria Kruk, Vice President of Biomechanics & Design, is spearheading a movement that fuses art, biology, and engineering into a new era of technological development—biomimicry. Together with a multidisciplinary team of engineers, artists, investors, and researchers, Kruk is helping to reimagine what robots can become—not just machines, but human-compatible companions, designed with the same grace, adaptability, and responsiveness found in nature itself. Biomimicry: Nature as the Ultimate Engineer Biomimicry, the practice of emulating nature's time-tested patterns and strategies, sits at the core of Clone's design philosophy. Instead of designing from scratch, Kruk and her team draw inspiration from evolution's finest work: the human body. "Nature doesn't guess—it evolves," says Kruk. That ethos is what guides her work as she oversees the design of machines that mimic bones, muscles, tendons, and even vascular systems. One of her most significant breakthroughs is a soft-bodied biomimetic robot, created to adapt intuitively to human interaction. The secret lies in its materials—engineered for flexibility, sensitivity, and human touch. "The attempt to create a human-like machine is incomplete if it's not made in our likeness," she explains. "Those crafted with a deep understanding of their biological origins can operate on the same efficient principles that govern the human body.". From Studio to Lab: An Artist's Path to Robotics Wiktoria Kruk's journey to robotics began not in a lab, but in a studio. With over a decade of experience in fine arts, she cultivated her skills in abstract thinking, observation, and multidisciplinary collaboration. That foundation now informs her approach to engineering design, offering a rare and valuable perspective. "My passion for breaking down complex systems and finding elegant solutions led me naturally to Clone," she says. "Wrocław, the city where I studied, has become both my home and the hub of this incredible innovation." Her work demonstrates how creativity and precision can coalesce to create designs that are not only functional—but beautiful. Following Evolution's Lead Clone was founded in 2021 by Dhanush Radhakrishnan and Łukasz Koźlik on the insight that with an artificial muscle fiber that approaches human skeletal muscle in performance, across force, speed, and displacement, actuating an anatomically accurate, natural skeleton with this muscle fiber will result in truly human-level androids by strength, speed, range of motion, and its lifelike behavior. By replicating human bones, ligaments, muscles, tendons, and fascia directly from anatomy textbooks, Clone's founding team has developed a soft, low-cost android design whose hardware is capable of performing virtually any human task with sufficient intelligence. Today, the company spans two continents with offices in both Wrocław and Mountain View. The founders are investing across textile engineering, microfluidics, advanced materials, battery technology, and embedded robotics to deliver the first untethered, walking Clones. Simultaneously, the team is scaling up their effort to build a robot foundation model for general-purpose autonomy, which includes amassing a team of scientists and engineers in robot learning along with a massive, real-world data collection effort to bootstrap the first Clone brain. "If this project succeeds," says Kruk, "we'll have created the most intuitive, elegant, and beautiful robot in the world—because it's built according to nature's own principles." The philosophy is clear: evolution is not just a guide, it's a blueprint. The Clone Alpha: Biomimicry in Motion The team's flagship creation, Clone Alpha, is a triumph of this philosophy. With 206 synthetic bones and Myofiber artificial muscles, the robot mirrors the human musculoskeletal system with startling fidelity. The result is a machine capable of fluid, natural movement—ideal for real-world applications in caregiving, domestic environments, and 13interactive services. By transferring mundane labor to machines that can truly integrate with people's lives, we free human labor to focus on what can't be automated: emotional insight, creativity, and critical decision-making. The Art of Simplification Despite the advanced outcomes, the process itself is grounded in patience and simplification. Designing structures to replicate microscopic tissue and fiber systems that have evolved over billions of years is a monumental challenge. Kruk and her team engage deeply with the materials, iteratively refining their approach until solutions emerge naturally. "There are no shortcuts in this kind of design," she explains. "It's about listening to the material, understanding the motion, and staying close to the process.". This hands-on, tactile methodology has been key to developing soft robotic systems that perform reliably without sacrificing nuance. Technology and Nature in Harmony Looking ahead, Wiktoria Kruk envisions a world where technology and nature aren't at odds, but work in harmony to support human flourishing. By studying nature's intricacies—from the geometry of connective tissues to the rhythms of locomotion—she aims to create robots that are sustainable, empathetic, and deeply attuned to human needs. "Nature holds the answers to most of the challenges we face," Kruk says. Her vision isn't just about better machines—it's about better relationships between people and the tools they use. In an era where artificial intelligence and automation dominate headlines, Wiktoria Kruk's work is a powerful reminder that the best innovations are often the ones we rediscover. At Clone, biomimicry is more than a strategy—it's a mindset. It challenges us to see machines not as cold tools, but as organic extensions of ourselves.
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
World's smartest shell? New armor material reacts in real time to crashes and impacts
Nature has spent millions of years building better protection. Think of a turtle's shell, the hard outer shell of a crab, or the shiny inside of a seashell. These aren't just for show. They help animals survive by spreading out force, soaking up impacts, and bending instead of breaking. Now, engineers are using those same ideas to create a new kind of man-made material. Inspired by seashells in particular, they've built a layered synthetic material that doesn't just take a hit but adapts to it. Each layer is designed to react differently, and all the layers work together to soften the blow. The new study, led by civil and environmental engineering professor Shelly Zhang from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and professor Ole Sigmund from the Technical University of Denmark, shows how this material could one day make things like car bumpers or wearable protection much smarter and safer. A practical way forward might seem simple: just copy how natural protective layers work. But the researchers chose to go a step further. Instead of reverse-engineering nature, they developed a method to program individual layers to work together under stress. One natural material in particular stood out: nacre, or mother-of-pearl. Found inside seashells of mollusks like oysters and abalones, nacre is made of microscopic layers that make it both hard and surprisingly tough. Scientists have long admired it for how well it absorbs force without cracking. Inspired by nacre's toughness, they designed synthetic layers that respond in a coordinated, adaptive way. 'We landed on the idea to design multilayered materials with each layer being capable of exhibiting different properties and behaviors,' Zhang said. This collective behavior marks a shift from earlier approaches that treated layers as isolated or static. In this new design, the layers actively collaborate, changing how force travels through the material. Buckling is what happens when a material suddenly bends or collapses under pressure, like when a metal can crumples under too much force. In most cases, it signals failure. But here, the researchers use it as a controlled response. Depending on the impact, the synthetic layers buckle in stages. This staggered response helps spread out the force and absorb more energy than traditional shock-absorbing materials. 'This work was born out of a discussion with my collaborator, Professor Sigmund, about how we already can achieve some very extreme behaviors, but there's always a physical limit or upper bound that single materials can achieve, even with programming,' Zhang said. 'That led us to consider what kind of engineering could enable some of the crazy material behaviors needed in real life. For example, extreme buckling behaviors could help dissipate energy for things like car bumpers.' The researchers didn't just assign properties to each layer. They programmed the micro-level connections between them, creating a material that acts like a single, intelligent unit. 'Our new framework presents several advantages over existing methodologies for nonlinear stress-strain responses,' Zhang said. 'It optimizes nacre-like multiple layers along with their interconnections in a continuum setup, which significantly expands the design space compared to similar work involving a single-layer setup or lattice structures.' When the team built physical prototypes, the materials didn't behave exactly as the models predicted. But the researchers saw that as useful. 'The discrepancy we found is something that will always happen in real life,' Zhang said. 'But we can harness this information to intentionally program the sequence of the buckling of each of the individual cells in assembly, store some information inside, and then later we can decode the information. It was fascinating to capture this discrepancy and for it to end up providing information needed to improve the work.' Zhang says large-scale manufacturing is still a hurdle. But the core idea is already a breakthrough. 'I think it works the same for materials,' she said. 'When different materials collectively work together, they can do things that are much more impactful than if they do things individually.' The study findings are published in the journal Science Advances.
