Even as human-caused climate change threatens the environment, nature continues to inspire our technological advancement.
"The solutions that are provided by nature have evolved for billions of years and tested repeatedly every day since the beginning of time," said Evripidis Gkanias, a University of Edinburgh researcher.
"Human creativity might be fascinating, but it cannot reach nature's robustness—and engineers know that," he told AFP.
From compasses mimicking insect eyes to forest fire-fighting robots that behave like vines, here's a selection of this year's nature-based technology.
Insect compass
Some insects -– such as ants and bees -– navigate visually based on the intensity and polarization of sunlight, thus using the sun's position as a reference point.
Researchers replicated their eye structure to construct a compass capable of estimating the sun's location in the sky, even on cloudy days.
Common compasses rely on Earth's weak magnetic field to navigate, which is easily disturbed by noise from electronics.
A prototype of the light-detecting compass is "already working great", said Gkanias, who led the study published in Communications Engineering.
Some insects – such as ants and bees – navigate visually based on the intensity and polarization of sunlight.