超越隐喻：仿生和壁虎的情况
理解自然的局限性对于理解生存事物采用的策略以及我们作为设计师如何最好地模仿它们的策略至关重要。
例如，我可能会说：“我可以像兔子一样跳跃”，但是我真的不能，现在可以吗？我的解剖结构与jackrabbit的解剖学完全不同，即使在复活节星期日，我也可以在20秒内越过草坪和两次触摸，这是不可想象的。
但是，我可能想研究动物运动的生物力学，比较不同的机制并提炼一些运动和生理学原理。随着这些，我可能会准备好提出一种创新的方法来帮助人类跳高或更长的时间。
In other words, I would have gone beyond metaphor because I understood the principles at work and, hopefully, applied them in an appropriate venue. Designers of tomorrow's buildings will similarly have to go beyond metaphor in order to apply truly useful biomimetic innovation to the problems of our built world.
Bob Full, director ofU.C.伯克利的Ciber Laband professor in the综合生物学系is cheerfully and unrelentingly skeptical of many of the proposals popularly espoused as biomimetic because of what he sees as a blithe disregard of scientific principles.
Full博士，以及Kellar Autumn教授刘易斯和克拉克学院, is part of the team that has patented the adhesive mechanism that the gecko uses to walk on ceilings (see the well-written“壁虎的脚”彼得·福布斯（Peter Forbes））。研发近10年，由工程学教授Ron Fauring领导的生物力学跨学科团队，工程师和物理学家仍在努力克服在纳米级制造这种现象的局限性。
但是，当解决制造问题时，这将是各种制造的革命。为什么？考虑一下可以粘在任何东西上，抵抗强力的干胶带可以做的事情，然后在您想要的时候轻松剥落，然后再次在其他地方使用。没有胶水，没有表面准备，没有互锁的零件，没有受体垫。如果您完全摆脱了“胶带”的概念，并使您的零件有选择地粘附，该怎么办？组件结构，摇篮回收，减少材料和能源的使用可能会受到这种发展的影响。
It strikes me that the implications are enormous because the application is closer to universal than anything that has come before. Increased universality seems to happen when basic principles are understood.
So, what are the principles associated with gecko adhesion? First off, there is our previously mentioned notion of bottom-up, component linked construction. In the gecko's case, each foot has hundreds of fringes or lamellae; these fringes have bristles or setae (about 500,000 on each foot); these bristles have hundreds of split ends; these split ends all have spatula-shaped ends to them, like tiny toe pads. All this results in an enormous amount of contact surface that runs up through many magnitudes of scale. It is estimated that a single gecko might have a billion of these tiny points of contact. Again, bigger is not necessarily better in nature, but often, more is.
Secondly, although walking on ceilings seems magical, the gecko does have to operate within the bounds of space and physics. Indeed, it is the effects of physical forces, not living tissue or animal behavior, that are the key to the gecko's talent.
What Autumn discovered and presented in 2000 was that all this contact surface was operating at the 2 nanometer range, and was therefore subject to van der Waals forces, the static molecular attraction between objects that only occurs at this scale. The tiny split ends were essentially filling in all the microscopic pits and bumps of an object's surface and sticking to it by this molecular attraction. We can't walk on the ceiling because our feet can't get close enough.
Finally, the gecko has developed over millions of years of natural selection to take advantage of these forces (to surf for free). One of the key features of the gecko phenomenon is that the animal can place a foot on a surface, “load” it so it sticks, and then peel it off effortlessly when it wants to move on. As anyone who has seen these creatures knows this can happen in a split second. Full and his team have discovered that it is all about angle when it comes to effective sticking and the gecko has merely adapted to an efficient way of peeling back its toes when it wants to move on.
Much remains to be discovered about the gecko's leg and tail mechanisms and, of course, about how to make all those tiny, compliant hairs that stick. While fascinated by and respectful of the gecko's ability, Full remains focused on human problems and on our ability to improve on nature's devices. He is fond of saying that “nature designs to the adequate,” and firmly believes in our ability to progress beyond what we observe in the natural world in order to solve our particular problems. In other words, of going beyond metaphor.
汤姆·麦凯格（Tom McKeag）teaches bio-inspired design to undergraduate design students at the California College of the Arts and to graduate architectural, science and engineering students at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the founder and president of BioDreamMachine, a nonprofit educational institute that brings bio-inspired design and science education to K12 schools. In 2006, McKeag helped establish the nation's first public elementary school course in biomimicry at the Dixie Elementary School in Marin County, Calif. In his spare time he works as a licensed landscape architect and community planner.
Geckos - CC license byjpockele,尼克·霍布古德（Nick Hobgood）andBelgianChocaly
例如，我可能会说：“我可以像兔子一样跳跃”，但是我真的不能，现在可以吗？我的解剖结构与jackrabbit的解剖学完全不同，即使在复活节星期日，我也可以在20秒内越过草坪和两次触摸，这是不可想象的。
但是，我可能想研究动物运动的生物力学，比较不同的机制并提炼一些运动和生理学原理。随着这些，我可能会准备好提出一种创新的方法来帮助人类跳高或更长的时间。
In other words, I would have gone beyond metaphor because I understood the principles at work and, hopefully, applied them in an appropriate venue. Designers of tomorrow's buildings will similarly have to go beyond metaphor in order to apply truly useful biomimetic innovation to the problems of our built world.
Bob Full, director ofU.C.伯克利的Ciber Laband professor in the综合生物学系is cheerfully and unrelentingly skeptical of many of the proposals popularly espoused as biomimetic because of what he sees as a blithe disregard of scientific principles.
Full博士，以及Kellar Autumn教授刘易斯和克拉克学院, is part of the team that has patented the adhesive mechanism that the gecko uses to walk on ceilings (see the well-written“壁虎的脚”彼得·福布斯（Peter Forbes））。研发近10年，由工程学教授Ron Fauring领导的生物力学跨学科团队，工程师和物理学家仍在努力克服在纳米级制造这种现象的局限性。
但是，当解决制造问题时，这将是各种制造的革命。为什么？考虑一下可以粘在任何东西上，抵抗强力的干胶带可以做的事情，然后在您想要的时候轻松剥落，然后再次在其他地方使用。没有胶水，没有表面准备，没有互锁的零件，没有受体垫。如果您完全摆脱了“胶带”的概念，并使您的零件有选择地粘附，该怎么办？组件结构，摇篮回收，减少材料和能源的使用可能会受到这种发展的影响。
It strikes me that the implications are enormous because the application is closer to universal than anything that has come before. Increased universality seems to happen when basic principles are understood.
So, what are the principles associated with gecko adhesion? First off, there is our previously mentioned notion of bottom-up, component linked construction. In the gecko's case, each foot has hundreds of fringes or lamellae; these fringes have bristles or setae (about 500,000 on each foot); these bristles have hundreds of split ends; these split ends all have spatula-shaped ends to them, like tiny toe pads. All this results in an enormous amount of contact surface that runs up through many magnitudes of scale. It is estimated that a single gecko might have a billion of these tiny points of contact. Again, bigger is not necessarily better in nature, but often, more is.Secondly, although walking on ceilings seems magical, the gecko does have to operate within the bounds of space and physics. Indeed, it is the effects of physical forces, not living tissue or animal behavior, that are the key to the gecko's talent.
What Autumn discovered and presented in 2000 was that all this contact surface was operating at the 2 nanometer range, and was therefore subject to van der Waals forces, the static molecular attraction between objects that only occurs at this scale. The tiny split ends were essentially filling in all the microscopic pits and bumps of an object's surface and sticking to it by this molecular attraction. We can't walk on the ceiling because our feet can't get close enough.
Finally, the gecko has developed over millions of years of natural selection to take advantage of these forces (to surf for free). One of the key features of the gecko phenomenon is that the animal can place a foot on a surface, “load” it so it sticks, and then peel it off effortlessly when it wants to move on. As anyone who has seen these creatures knows this can happen in a split second. Full and his team have discovered that it is all about angle when it comes to effective sticking and the gecko has merely adapted to an efficient way of peeling back its toes when it wants to move on.
Much remains to be discovered about the gecko's leg and tail mechanisms and, of course, about how to make all those tiny, compliant hairs that stick. While fascinated by and respectful of the gecko's ability, Full remains focused on human problems and on our ability to improve on nature's devices. He is fond of saying that “nature designs to the adequate,” and firmly believes in our ability to progress beyond what we observe in the natural world in order to solve our particular problems. In other words, of going beyond metaphor.
汤姆·麦凯格（Tom McKeag）teaches bio-inspired design to undergraduate design students at the California College of the Arts and to graduate architectural, science and engineering students at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the founder and president of BioDreamMachine, a nonprofit educational institute that brings bio-inspired design and science education to K12 schools. In 2006, McKeag helped establish the nation's first public elementary school course in biomimicry at the Dixie Elementary School in Marin County, Calif. In his spare time he works as a licensed landscape architect and community planner.
Geckos - CC license byjpockele,尼克·霍布古德（Nick Hobgood）andBelgianChocaly
