Nature's Inspiration

Nature-inspired design or biomimicry is a rapidly evolving field that studies all elements of nature for sources of inspiration and innovation.  Festo's bionic handling assist (BHA) is just one of the many concepts that have been developed recently.  It's entirely possible that sometime in the near future an elephant trunk-inspired robotic arm could make its way into an operating room.  Additionally, the 3-D "printing" process used to manufacture the BHA provides enormous design flexibility and produces significantly less manufacturing waste than conventional manufacturing processes.  Who would have thought an elephant would lead to innovation - pretty cool!