Biomimetics: Reality, Challenges, and Outlook - Biomimetics: Biologically Inspired Technologies - page 512

There are many challenges to mimicking nature but the possibilities are endless. As long as we
would not reach the level of having a chip grows from a micron size in a hibernated state to an
active fully grown robot that is highly intelligent and autonomous, biomimetics will still be a useful
source of inspiration for inventors. Success in developing and implementing nature's ideas will
bring science fiction and imaginations to engineering reality. One of the great challenges to
imitating biology is to create robots that mimic such creatures as octopus. This would mean having
robots that are highly flexible and dexterous that operate intelligently and autonomously with the
capability to crawl through very narrow strips, camouflage its body by matching the colors, shape
and texture of the surrounding, be equipped with multiple tentacles and suction cups for gripping on
objects, using ink as a smoke screen, see clearly without blind spots, and having many other
capabilities and multifunctional components that can perform multiple tasks simultaneously.
The future of biomimetics is quite exciting but it is hard to predict what would be learned or
mimicked next. One can envision in the years to come that many more tools and capabilities will
emerge in every scale of our life from nano levels to macro and beyond. The benefits can be
expected in such areas as medical, military, consumer products, and many others.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Research reported in this manuscript was partially conducted at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL), California Institute of Technology, under a contract with National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA).
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