Research
Through millions of years of trial and error, animals, plants and microbes have evolved particularly efficient innovations and sparing ways of doing things. Lifescaped has developed a creative process to make these innovations legible to industry and ready for business. Nature’s innovations could make cars more aerodynamic, make company software more secure and result in sunscreens that do not harm marine life.
Case Studies
Some examples of our current projects, revealing the diversity of the scientific subjects we cover, and the geographical spread of the species we study.
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Structures and chemicals
Nature contains endless structures, microstructures and nanostructures with clever architectures. These work very efficiently, and could be exploited in the human worlds of engineering, buildings, optics, aero/hydro-dynamics and in sound, water and heat management, for example. Many of the chemicals made by living cells may also offer inspiration to industry.
Pure Structural Colour resulted from the discovery of an underlying principle that governed the control of light to produce an ultra-bright yet velvety colour effect. This was found in Birds of Paradise and tropical butterflies and reef animals, for example. We found a way to reproduce this principle in factories, economically, which led to a developed business plan.
Predictive software
The organization of ant colonies, flocks of starlings and schools of herring, for example, offer inspiration for optimization models for human orderliness. Evolutionary events, where the ‘before’, ‘after’ and reasons for change are known, can be comparable to the activities of businesses, and therefore provide models to copy. This includes the introduction of vision to previously blind animal communities in the Cambrian period. For example, see Scientific American March 2015, pages 64–69.
Wellbeing
The bio-inspired approach may bring further implications for our well-being. For instance, we perceive and enjoy the types of colours we find in nature because of the long evolution of our ancestors. The bright colours in nature may have become a stimulus to boost our morale, perhaps to help early humans to get through difficult times, such as an ice age. These adaptations remain as a part of our bodies today. If we could reproduce nature’s patterns and brightest forms of colour in our buildings and possessions, for instance, then we could improve our health and well-being.