Reply to the correspondence: "On the fracture toughness of bioinspired ceramic materials"

This is a reply to the correspondence of Prof. Robert Ritchie: "On the fracture toughness of bioinspired ceramic materials", submitted to Nature Materials, which discusses the fracture toughness values of the following papers: Bouville, F., Maire, E., Meille, S., Van de Moort\`ele, B., Stevenson, A. J., & Deville, S. (2014). Strong, tough and stiff bioinspired ceramics from brittle constituents. Nature Materials, 13(5), 508-514 and Le Ferrand, H., Bouville, F., Niebel, T. P., & Studart, A. R. (2015). Magnetically assisted slip casting of bioinspired heterogeneous composites. Nature Materials, 14(11), 1172-1172.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Biomimetic and bioinspired silica : recent developments and applications

In a previous review of biological and bioinspired silica formation (S. V. Patwardhan et al., Chem. Commun., 2005, 1113 [ref. 1]), we have identified and discussed the roles that organic molecules (additives) play in silica formation in vitro. Tremendous progress has been made in this field since and this review attempts to capture, with selected examples from the literature, the key advances in synthesising and controlling properties of silica-based materials using bioinspired approaches, i.e. conditions of near-neutral pH, all aqueous environments and room temperature. One important reason to investigate biosilicifying systems is to be able to develop novel materials and/or technologies suitable for a wide range of applications. Therefore, this review will also focus on applications arising from research on biological and bioinspired silica. A range of applications such as in the areas of sensors, coatings, hybrid materials, catalysis and biocatalysis and drug delivery have started appearing. Furthermore, scale-up of this technology suitable for large-scale manufacturing has proven the potential of biologically inspired synthesis

Bioinspired engineering of exploration systems for NASA and DoD

A new approach called bioinspired engineering of exploration systems (BEES) and its value for solving pressing NASA and DoD needs are described. Insects (for example honeybees and dragonflies) cope remarkably well with their world, despite possessing a brain containing less than 0.01% as many neurons as the human brain. Although most insects have immobile eyes with fixed focus optics and lack stereo vision, they use a number of ingenious, computationally simple strategies for perceiving their world in three dimensions and navigating successfully within it. We are distilling selected insect-inspired strategies to obtain novel solutions for navigation, hazard avoidance, altitude hold, stable flight, terrain following, and gentle deployment of payload. Such functionality provides potential solutions for future autonomous robotic space and planetary explorers. A BEES approach to developing lightweight low-power autonomous flight systems should be useful for flight control of such biomorphic flyers for both NASA and DoD needs. Recent biological studies of mammalian retinas confirm that representations of multiple features of the visual world are systematically parsed and processed in parallel. Features are mapped to a stack of cellular strata within the retina. Each of these representations can be efficiently modeled in semiconductor cellular nonlinear network (CNN) chips. We describe recent breakthroughs in exploring the feasibility of the unique blending of insect strategies of navigation with mammalian visual search, pattern recognition, and image understanding into hybrid biomorphic flyers for future planetary and terrestrial applications. We describe a few future mission scenarios for Mars exploration, uniquely enabled by these newly developed biomorphic flyers

Bioinspired Multifunctional Anti-icing Hydrogel

The recent anti-icing strategies in the state of the art mainly focused on three aspects: inhibiting ice nucleation, preventing ice propagation, and decreasing ice adhesion strength. However, it is has proved difficult to prevent ice nucleation and propagation while decreasing adhesion simultaneously, due to their highly distinct, even contradictory design principles. In nature, anti-freeze proteins (AFPs) offer a prime example of multifunctional integrated anti-icing materials that excel in all three key aspects of the anti-icing process simultaneously by tuning the structures and dynamics of interfacial water. Here, inspired by biological AFPs, we successfully created a multifunctional anti-icing material based on polydimethylsiloxane-grafted polyelectrolyte hydrogel that can tackle all three aspects of the anti-icing process simultaneously. The simplicity, mechanical durability, and versatility of these smooth hydrogel surfaces make it a promising option for a wide range of anti-icing applications

Integrated Circuitry to Detect Slippage Inspired by Human Skin and Artificial Retinas

This paper presents a bioinspired integrated tactile coprocessor that is able to generate a warning in the case of slippage via the data provided by a tactile sensor. Some implementations use different layers of piezoresistive and piezoelectric materials to build upon the raw sensor and obtain the static (pressure) as well as the dynamic (slippage) information. In this paper, a simple raw sensor is used, and a circuitry is implemented, which is able to extract the dynamic information from a single piezoresistive layer. The circuitry was inspired by structures found in human skin and retina, as they are biological systems made up of a dense network of receptors. It is largely based on an artificial retina , which is able to detect motion by using relatively simple spatial temporal dynamics. The circuitry was adapted to respond in the bandwidth of microvibrations produced by early slippage, resembling human skin. Experimental measurements from a chip implemented in a 0.35-mum four-metal two-poly standard CMOS process are presented to show both the performance of the building blocks included in each processing node and the operation of the whole system as a detector of early slippage.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2006-12376-C02-01Gobierno de España TEC2006- 1572

A bioinspired optoelectronically engineered artificial neurorobotics device with sensorimotor functionalities

Development of the next generation of bio- and nano-electronics is inseparably connected to the innovative concept of emulation and reproduction of biological sensorimotor systems and artificial neurobotics. Here, we report for the first time principally new artificial bioinspired optoelectronic sensorimotor system for the controlable immitation of opto-genetically engineered neurons in the biological motor system. The device is based on inorganic optical synapse (In-doped TiO2 nanofilm) assembled into a liquid metal (galinstan) actuator. The optoelectronic synapse generates polarised excitatory and inhibitory postsynaptic potentials to trigger the liquid metal droplet to vibrate and then mimic the expansion and contraction of biological fibre muscle. The low-energy consumption and precise modulation of electrical and mechanical outputs are the distinguished characteristics of fabricated sensorimotor system. This work is the underlying significant step towards the development of next generation of low-energy the internet of things for bioinspired neurorobotic and bioelectronic system