What inventions of mankind are inspired by insects?

Classification: Education/Science >> Science and Technology

Analysis:

Insects are small in size, huge in species and quantity, accounting for more than 75% of existing animals, and spread all over the world. They have their own survival skills, some of which are not as good as human beings. People use natural resources more and more widely, especially any achievement in bionics comes from some characteristics of biology.

Butterfly and Bionics

Colorful butterflies, such as butterflies with double moon patterns, monarch butterflies with brown veins, especially butterflies with fluorescent wings, have golden, green and blue hind wings in the sun. Scientists have brought great benefits to military defense by studying the color of butterflies. During World War II, the Germans surrounded Leningrad in an attempt to destroy its military targets and other defense facilities with bombers. Schwarzenegger, an entomologist in the Soviet Union, put forward the principle that the color of butterflies is not easy to be found in flowers, and covered military facilities with butterfly-like camouflage. Therefore, although the Germans went all out, the military base in Leningrad remained undisturbed, which laid a solid foundation for winning the final victory. According to the same principle, people later produced camouflage uniforms, which greatly reduced the casualties in the battle.

The constant change of satellite position in space will cause a sudden change of temperature, sometimes the temperature difference can be as high as two or three hundred degrees, which seriously affects the normal work of many instruments. Inspired by the fact that the scales on butterflies automatically change their angles with the direction of sunlight to adjust their body temperature, scientists have made the satellite's temperature control system into a louver style with great differences in radiation and heat dissipation ability between the front and back of the blades. A temperature-sensitive metal wire is installed at the rotating position of each window, which can adjust the opening and closing of the window with the change of temperature, so as to keep the internal temperature of the satellite constant and solve a major problem in the aerospace industry.

Beetles and bionics

In order to defend itself, fart beetles can spray high-temperature liquid "shells" with stench to confuse, * * * and scare the enemy. After dissection, scientists found that there are three chambers in the beetle body, which store dihydric phenol solution, hydrogen peroxide and biological enzyme respectively. Diphenol and hydrogen peroxide flow into the third chamber and mix with biological enzyme to have a chemical reaction, which instantly becomes venom at 100℃ and is quickly ejected. This principle has been applied to military technology at present. During World War II, the German Nazis made a new engine with huge power and safe and reliable performance according to this mechanism, which was installed on cruise missiles, making it fly faster, safer and more stable, and improving the hit rate. London, England suffered heavy losses when it was bombed. American military experts have developed advanced binary weapons inspired by the principle of beetle spraying. This weapon contains two or more chemicals that can produce toxins in two separate containers. After the projectile was launched, the diaphragm broke, and the two poison intermediates mixed and reacted within 8- 10 seconds of the projectile's flight, producing deadly venom at the moment when it reached the target and killed the enemy. They are easy to produce, store and transport, safe and not easy to fail. Fireflies can directly convert chemical energy into light energy, and the conversion efficiency reaches 100%, while the luminous efficiency of ordinary electric lamps is only 6%. The cold light source made by people imitating the luminous principle of fireflies can improve luminous efficiency by more than ten times and save energy greatly. In addition, an air-to-ground speedometer based on beetle apparent motion response mechanism has been successfully applied to aviation.

Dragonflies and Bionics

Dragonflies can generate local unstable airflow different from the surrounding atmosphere through the vibration of their wings, and use the vortex generated by the airflow to make themselves rise. Dragonflies can soar under a small thrust, not only forward, but also backward and left and right, and its forward flight speed can reach 72 km/h. In addition, the flight behavior of dragonflies is simple, with only two pairs of wings flapping constantly. Scientists have successfully developed a helicopter based on this structural foundation. When an airplane flies at high speed, it often causes violent vibration, and sometimes even breaks its wings, causing the airplane to crash. Dragonflies rely on aggravated wing moles to fly safely at high speed, so people follow the example of dragonflies and add weights to the two wings of the plane to solve the thorny problem of vibration caused by high-speed flight.

In order to study the aerodynamics and flight efficiency of gliding flight and collision, a mobile wing (wing) model with four-blade drive and remote horizontal control was developed, and the flight parameters were tested in the wind tunnel for the first time.

The second model tries to install a wing flying at a faster frequency, reaching the speed of 18 vibrations per second. What is different is that this model adopts a device that can variably adjust the phase difference between the front and rear wings.

The central and long-term goal of this research is to study the performance of aircraft driven by "wing" and compare it with the efficiency of aircraft driven by traditional propeller.

Flies and Bionics

The special feature of housefly is its fast flying technology, which makes it difficult to be caught by humans. Even behind it, it is difficult to get close to it. It imagines every situation, is very careful and can move quickly. So, how did it do it?

Entomologists found that the fly's hind wings degenerated into a pair of balance bars. When it flies, the balance bar vibrates mechanically at a certain frequency, which can adjust the movement direction of its wings. It is a navigator to keep the balance of flies. Based on this principle, scientists have developed a new generation of navigator-vibrating gyroscope, which greatly improves the flight performance of the aircraft, enables the aircraft to automatically stop the dangerous rollover flight, and automatically restore the balance when the body is strongly inclined, even when the aircraft is in the most complicated sharp turn. The fly's compound eye contains 4000 single eyes that can be imaged independently, and almost 360 can be seen clearly. Objects within range. Inspired by the fly's eye, people made a fly's eye camera consisting of 1329 small lenses, which can take 1329 high-resolution photos at one time. It is widely used in military, medical, aviation and aerospace fields. Flies have a particularly sensitive sense of smell and can quickly analyze dozens of smells and respond immediately. According to the structure of flies' olfactory organs, scientists have converted various chemical reactions into electric pulses, and made a very sensitive small gas analyzer, which is widely used in spacecraft, submarines, mines and other gas components, making the safety factor of scientific research and production more accurate and reliable.

Bees and Bionics

Beehives are composed of hexagonal small hives arranged neatly, and the bottom of each small hive is composed of three identical diamonds. These structures are exactly the same as those accurately calculated by modern mathematicians-the obtuse angle of the diamond is109 28' and the acute angle is 70 32'. They are the most material-saving structures, and they are very large and strong, which surprised many experts. People imitate its structure and make honeycomb sandwich structural plates with various materials. This structural plate has high strength, light weight and is not easy to conduct sound and heat. They are ideal materials for making space shuttles, spaceships and artificial satellites. Polarizers sensitive to the direction of polarized light are arranged adjacent to each eye of the compound eye of bees, which can be accurately positioned by the sun. Based on this principle, scientists have successfully developed a polarized light navigator, which has been widely used in navigation.

Other insects and bionics

Fleas have a high jumping ability, and aviation experts have done a lot of research on it. Inspired by its vertical take-off, a British aircraft manufacturing company successfully manufactured a Harrier aircraft that can take off and land almost vertically. According to the structural characteristics of insects' single compound eyes, modern television technology has created a large-screen color TV, which can also be composed of small color TV screens. Some specific small pictures can be framed at any position on the same screen, and the same picture can be played as well as different pictures. According to the structural characteristics of insect compound eyes, scientists have successfully developed a multi-aperture optical system device that is easier to find targets, and it has been applied in some important weapon systems abroad. According to the mutual inhibition principle of some aquatic insects compound eyes, an electronic model of lateral inhibition is made, which can be used in various photographic systems. The photos taken can enhance the contrast of the image edge and highlight the outline, and can also be used to improve the display sensitivity of radar, and can also be used for preprocessing the text and picture recognition system. Based on the processing information of insect compound eye and the principle of directional navigation, the United States has developed an engineering model of terminal guidance seeker with great practical value. Japan has developed new construction methods of construction machinery and buildings such as hexapod robots by using the morphology and characteristics of insects.

Future prospects

Insects have evolved gradually with the change of environment in the evolution process of hundreds of millions of years, and they are developing their own survival skills to varying degrees. With the development of society, people are more and more aware of various life activities of insects, and more and more aware of the importance of insects to human beings. Coupled with the application of information technology, especially the application of the new generation of computer bioelectronics technology in entomology, a series of biotechnology projects, such as biosensors developed by simulating insect's perceptual ability to detect the types and concentrations of substances, and computers developed by imitating brain activities with reference to insect's neural structure, will turn scientists' ideas into reality and enter various fields, and insects will make greater contributions to mankind.