Advances in robotics have facilitated the development of biomimetic robotics inspired by the different design plans found in the animal kingdom. Such biomimetic artifacts can provide excellent models of their biological counterparts, allowing us to ask and answer questions about the biological system that cannot be addressed through experiments alone.
CSNII emphasize that it is the transfer of function from biology to the machine that allows biomimetics to test hypotheses from the biological sciences; otherwise, there is a danger of merely blind copying or mimicry of design principles with no further insight into the living system. In this sense of transferring biological function, biomimetic systems can thus provide a test bed for theoretical ideas in biology and a means for generating biological solutions to challenges in science and technology, and we may consider them an implementation of ‘living machines’.
see ROBOTICS INSPIRED BY THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
