Nature: A Designer's Toolbox

In 1989, Japan's Shinkansen bullet train had a problem. It was fast, really fast. Pushing 167 miles per hour fast. Every time it entered a tunnel, it pushed waves of atmospheric pressure through the other end. Creating a micro-pressure wave, a phenomenon called "tunnel boom," the air left the tunnel with a sonic boom that could be heard from up to 400 meters away. And in residential areas, that was a problem. In response, Japan brought in an engineering team to design a quieter and more efficient train. In a moment of inspiration, lead engineer Eiji Nakatsu had an idea: to redesign the system based on the aerodynamics of birds, most notably of all, the Kingfisher.

The Remodeled Shinkansen Bullet Train, Japan

The Kingfisher is a species of bird that dives into water to catch its prey. From its vantage point over a river or stream, the Kingfisher can descend into a controlled vertical dive right above its target, ensuring that its beak is the first thing that enters the water. And that, its dart-like bill, is what Nakatsu was interested in. The unique shape of its beak allows it to dive while barely making a splash, due to its streamlined and aerodynamic structure. 

A Kingfisher Diving For Its Prey

Nakatsu took the shape to the design table, and after multiple tests found that the quietest nose design was the one most closely modeled after the Kingfisher's beak. The redesign debuted in 1997, and the Shinkansen train was 10% faster and stayed under the 70 dB noise limit in residential areas—all achieved with the beak of a Kingfisher. 

This type of design is called biomimicry, a process that looks to the natural world for inspiration to drive innovation. The thought process is simple: nature has had billions of years to test, tweak, and change the organisms around us through evolution, and in turn, has already solved many of the problems we, or the designer, face today. Humans have existed on the planet for only about 200,000 years, while the natural world has had billions of years of research and development. Its time-tested structures, patterns, and solutions are what biomimicry seeks to bring to innovation.  And that's the end goal for biometric design: to create products, systems, and even cities that are indistinguishable from nature. 

The Shinkansen bullet train is only one of thousands of examples of biometric design in the world today. Hospitals have mimicked the surface of shark skin to create bacteria-resistant plastic surfaces. Shark skin itself isn't an antimicrobial surface, but it's highly adapted to resist attachment of living organisms to its surface, something inherently useful for limiting the amount of infections patients can get in hospitals. 

Shark Skin vs. Artificial Plastic

Researchers studying the Stenocara beetle, living in the arid African Namib dessert, have recreated its fascinating ability to collect moisture from the air in water collectors around the world. A distinct pattern of nodes along the beetle’s back allows it to collect moisture from fog, which trickles down its legs to its mouth. Developing these biomimetic patterns in human technology can expedite water collection in areas of need. 

Stenocara Beetle Photo and Water Collection Model

Wind turbines can be arranged in the same drag-reducing pattern that schools of fish swim in. By imitating schools of fish, engineers can increase wind farm output by 10 times that of traditional farms. 

Moon jellies have a highly efficient mode of propulsion, where they suck water into their bells and then contract their bodies, pushing out the water behind themselves. This kind of movement, researchers say, is extremely energy efficient. The same low energy-high efficiently thrust mechanics of the moon jelly can be applied to slow-moving ocean monitoring devices for nautical researchers and the Navy. 

Moon Jelly Propulsion

One of the most famous examples of biometric design came from Swiss engineer George de Mestral. In 1941, he was removing burrs from his dog when he decided to examine them under a microscope out of curiosity. Astonishingly, he found that the small hooks on the burrs adhered exceedingly well to the looping structures of fur and fabric's, sparking an idea to recreate the mechanism artificially as a fastener. And thus, came the invention of velcro. 

The Burr-Based Velcro Mechanism

For designers, the natural world can have the solutions to any problem. You just gotta know where to look.