When industry, materials development, or materials research seek robust, efficient, and sustainable solutions, it is worthwhile to look where millions of years of development, optimization, and testing have already taken place: in nature. In the one-hour session of the Biologization of Technology webinar series, participants learned about the innovation potential of biological functional principles and how systematic development routines enable the transfer of nature’s strategies into technology.

Dr. Rainer Erb described nature as a reservoir of efficient solution strategies and condensed this perspective into the evolutionary leitmotif “Survival of the cheapest” – referring to material and energy efficiency. Evolutionarily successful strategies become models for technology because they combine robust functionality with economical use of resources. Complex materials are created from just a few building blocks and are later degradable and reusable. The properties of biological models that are particularly relevant for technical materials often derive from their hierarchical structure. As a result, they frequently combine multiple functionalities and can act adaptively or interactively, heal themselves, or self-regulate. Erb made a clear distinction between “Biology Push”, where discovered biological effects such as the lotus effect are studied and transferred into products, and “Technology Pull”, where a specific technical challenge triggers the targeted search for biological analogies – the dominant pathway today.

Markus Hollermann situated the transfer within the methodology of bionic development, which in Germany is also supported by VDI guidelines. At its core lies an iterative, dialogue-oriented process between biology, technology, and application. The shorthand Triple A – Analyze, Abstract, Apply describes the pathway from precise functional analysis through analogy search to implementation. The webinar demonstrated how functions such as “to fix” and their semantic variations expand the search space and how databases, digital tools, and AI-assisted research help to identify relevant analogies. These biological principles can then be abstracted into viable concepts and prioritized according to criteria such as functionality, feasibility, sustainability, and risk.

The practical approach remains deliberately flexible. Teams may begin with short ideation sprints in the spirit of DIY bionics, use consultancy formats for orientation, or establish research collaborations with scalable levels of effort. The decisive factor is a project architecture tailored to the specific question and the early integration of relevant partners from biology, materials science, simulation, manufacturing, and application—ensuring a seamless transition from analogy to realization.

The webinar is embedded in the funding initiative Biologization of Technology: Bioinspired Materials Research, within which twelve R&D&I projects are running between 2023 and 2027. The thematic scope ranges from medical technology and implantology to automotive engineering, pharmaceuticals, wastewater treatment, optics, and coating technology. Feedback from participants was highly positive, particularly regarding the clear process logic from functional thinking to analogy search to structured evaluation. The webinar can still be watched as a recording on YouTube.

The series will continue; upcoming dates will be announced at biologisierung-der-technik.de.

17 October 2025, 2 pm

“Biological principles as a driver of innovation: Laser-based surface structuring based on nature's example”

Dr.-Ing. Dominik Britz (SurFunction GmbH)

LINK

12 November 2025, 3 pm

“Naturally inspired - technically implemented: Biologically inspired solutions for biomedical engineering”

Prof. Dr. Oliver Schwarz (Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA)

LINK