Stunning, creative and innovative!
How does nature solve transportation challenges? Transportation is linked not only to movement of people and goods, but also to equality, access to food and wildlife impacts.
Student teams from around the world took part in the Biomimicry Student Design Challenge. Nature-inspired transportation ideas where used to design solutions that addressed one or both of the following:
- Make public transit, freight or individual transportation options (excluding cars), more responsive to user needs. This may include aspects of accessibility, security, comfort, flexibility, etc.
- Reduce the environmental impact of any form of transportation. This may include aspects of energy use, GHG emissions, urban heat island effects, material need/waste, pollution, and/or negative effects on biodiversity.
The student teams looked for inspiration for their designs by studying the ways that ecosystems in their home environment addressed the problems that they had decided to solve. Marvell and enjoy some of the creative and innovative ideas that are shown in the entries below. You can see the two first prize winning entries and the third prize winning entry. Go here to see all the entries.
The Canadian team’s designed an “Air Ballast Biomimetic Cargo Ship” inspired by fish swim bladders. The Mexican team’s design, “Mocan,” was inspired by the way millipedes and snakes move. The third price was given to a team from California State University, Long Beach, inspired by whiskers and bioluminescent aquatic organisms.
You can biomimicry in your preschool or school to challenge children and students. Select a topic where new ideas are needed and look for inspiration in your environment. Biomimicry is a great way to look, really look at nature and use it as an inspiration for new ideas. Nature uses clever and often beautiful ways to solve challenges.
Go here to read the blog post Biomimicry Design Challenge Using Mind Mapping
Think Dive - Sparking Children's Thinkibility 