Preface

Life on earth has been evolving for the last 3–4 billion years, in which time it has developed a level of complexity that is most challenging to understand. With major breakthroughs in physics and chemistry in the last century, it is the advances in biological sciences that are gaining momentum in this century. The insights gained into the inner workings of the living world have always inspired scientists from bordering disciplines to copy or mimic nature in abiotic systems. Engineers have long been inspired by the macroscopic living world and have developed bio-inspired technologies ranging from Velcro to wing design for aeroplanes to advanced robotics. Bioinspiration and biomimetics often go hand-in-hand. While the latter term describes the direct replication of biological working principles in manmade systems, bio-inspiration usually refers to a more general translation of molecular, microscopic, and macroscopic structures and functionalities from living systems into synthetic ones.