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The intent of Bio-inspired Engineering of Exploration Systems (BEES) is to distill the principles found in successful, nature-tested mechanisms of specific crucial functions that are hard to accomplish by conventional methods, but accomplished rather deftly in nature by biological organisms.
Here, conventional methods for extracting rare earth metals (REMs) from mined mineral ores are inefficient, expensive, and environmentally damaging. Recent discovery of lanmodulin (LanM), a protein that coordinates REMs with high-affinity and selectivity over competing ions, provides inspiration for new REM refinement methods. Here, we used quantum mechanical (QM) methods to investigate trivalent lanthanide cation (Ln 3+ ) interactions with coordination systems representing bulk solvent water and protein binding sites. Energy decomposition analysis (EDA) showed differences in the energetic components of Ln 3+ interaction with representatives of solvent (water, H 2 O) and protein binding sites (acetate, CH 3 COO – ), highlighting the importance of accurate description of electrostatics and polarization in computational modeling of REM interactions with biological and bioinspired molecules. Relative binding free energies were obtained for Ln 3+ with coordination complexes originating from binding sites in PDB structures of a lanthanum binding peptide (PDB entry 7CCO) and LanM, with explicit consideration of the first hydration shell waters, according to quasi-chemical theory (QCT). Beyond the first shell, the bulk solvent environment was represented with an implicit continuum model. Ln 3+ interactions with (H 2 O) 9 and both binding site models became more favorable, moving down the periodic series. This trend was more pronounced with the protein binding site models than with water, resulting in affinity increasing with periodic number, except for the last REM, Lu 3+ , which bound less favorably than the preceding element, Yb 3+ . Using the truncated 7CCO binding site model, the magnitude and trend of the experimental Ln 3+ relative binding free energies for the whole 7CCO peptide were reproduced. Conversely, the previously reported experimental data for LanM show a preference for the earlier lanthanides; this is likely due to longer-range interactions and cooperative effects, which are not represented by the reduced models. Using the truncated 7CCO binding site model, the magnitude and trend of the experimental Ln 3+ relative binding free energies for the whole 7CCO peptide were reproduced. In contrast to the previously reported experimental data for LanM, the peptide preferentially binds the earlier lanthanides. This difference likely arises due to longer-range interactions and cooperative effects not represented by the peptide. Further investigation of Ln 3+ interactions with whole proteins using polarizable molecular mechanics models with explicit solvent is warranted to understand the influence of longer-ranged interactions, cooperativity, and bulk solvent. Nevertheless, the present work provides new insights into Ln 3+ interactions with biomolecules and presents an effective computational platform for designing specific single-site REM binding peptides more efficiently.
We will illustrate how autonomous biomorphic flyers will enable imagery and environmental measurements to be captured from extremely low altitudes and even inside terrain features.
This paper describes an overview of our "Bioinspired Engineering of Exploration Systems for Mars" ( "BEES for Mars") project. The BEES approach distills selected biologically inspired strategies utilizing motion cues/optic flow, bioinspired pattern recognition, biological visual and neural control systems, bioinspired sensing and communication techniques, and birds of prey inspired search and track algorithmic systems. Unique capabilities so enabled, provide potential solutions to future autonomous robotic space and planetary mission applications. With the first series of tests performed in September 2003, August 2004 and September 2004, we have demonstrated the BEES technologies at the El Mirage Dry Lakebed site in the Mojave Desert using Delta Wing experimental prototypes. We call these test flyers the "BEES flyer", since we are developing them as dedicated test platform for the newly developed bioinspired sensors, processors and algorithmic strategies. The Delta Wing offers a robust airframe that can sustain high G launches and offers ease of compact stowability and packaging along with scaling to small size and low ReynOld's number performance for a potential Mars deployment. Our approach to developing light weight, low power autonomous flight systems using concepts distilled from biology promises to enable new applications, of dual use to NASA and DoD needs. Small in size (0.5 -5 Kg) BEES Flyers are demonstrating capabilities for autonomous flight and sensor operability in Mars analog conditions. The BEES project team spans JPL, NASA Ames, Australian National University (ANU), Brigham Young University(BYU), DC Berkeiey, Analogic Computers Inc. and other institutions. The highlights from our recent flight demonstrations exhibiting new Mission enabling capabilities are described. Further, this paper describes two classes of potential new missions for Mars exploration: (1) the long range exploration missions, and (2) observation missions, for real time imaging of critical ephemeral phenomena, that can be enabled by use of BEES flyers. For example, such flyers can serve as a powerful black-box for critical descent and landing data and enablers for improved science missions complementing and supplementing the existing assets like landers and rovers by providing valuable exploration and quick extended low-altitude aerial coverage of the sites of interest by imaging them and distributing instruments to them. Imaging done by orbiters allows broad surface coverage at limited spatial resolution. Low altitude air-borne exploration of Mars offers a means for imaging large areas, perhaps up to several hundred kilometers, quickly and efficiently, providing a close-up birds-eye view of the planetary terrain and close-up approach to constrained difficult areas like canyons and craters. A novel approach to low-mass yet highly capable flyers is enabled by small aircraft equipped using sensors and processors and algorithms developed using BEES technology. This project is focused towards showing the direct impact of blending the best of artificial intelligence attributes and bioinspiration to create a leap beyond existing capability for our future Missions.
Bioinspired Engineering Exploration Systems (BEES), is enabling new bioinspired sensors for autonomous exploration of Mars. The steps towards autonomy in development of these BEES flyers are described. A future set of Mars mission that are uniquely enabled by surch flyers are finally described.
Mineralization is a long-lasting method commonly used by biological materials to selectively strengthen in response to site specific mechanical stress. Achieving a similar form of toughening in synthetic polymer composites remains challenging. In previous work, we developed methods to promote chemical reactions via the piezoelectrochemical effect with mechanical responses of inorganic, ZnO nanoparticles. Herein, we report a distinct example of a mechanically-mediated reaction in which the spherical ZnO nanoparticles react themselves leading to the formation of microrods composed of a Zn/S mineral inside an organogel. The microrods can be used to selectively create mineral deposits within the material resulting in the strengthening of the overall resulting composite.
Interlocking metasurfaces (ILMs) are patterned arrays of mating features that enable the joining of bodies by constraining motion and transmitting force. They offer an alternative to traditional joining solutions such as mechanical fasteners, welds, and adhesives. This study explores the development of bio-inspired ILMs using a problem-driven bioinspired design (BID) framework. We develop a taxonomy of attachment solutions that considers both biological and engineered systems and derive conventional design principles for ILM design. We conceptualize two engineering implementations to demonstrate concept development using the taxonomy and ILM conventional design principle through the BID framework: one for rapidly assembled bridge truss members and another for modular microrobots. These implementations highlight the potential of BID to enhance performance, functionality, and tunability in ILMs.
This paper highlights how in just about 100 years since the first successful flight took place at Kitty Hawk, our recent developments using inspiration from biology are enabling us to demonstrate flight capability for Mars exploration.
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Abstract A long-standing challenge in bioinspired materials is to design and synthesize synthetic materials that mimic the sophisticated structures and functions of natural biomaterials, such as helical protein assemblies that are important in biological systems. Herein, we report the formation of a series of nanohelices from a type of well-developed protein-mimetics called peptoids. We demonstrate that nanohelix structures and supramolecular chirality can be well-controlled through the side-chain chemistry. Specifically, the ionic effects on peptoids from varying the polar side-chain groups result in the formation of either single helical fiber or hierarchically stacked helical bundles. We also demonstrate that the supramolecular chirality of assembled peptoid helices can be controlled by modifying assembling peptoids with a single chiral amino acid side chain. Computational simulations and theoretical modeling predict that minimizing exposure of hydrophobic domains within a twisted helical form presents the most thermodynamically favorable packing of these amphiphilic peptoids and suggests a key role for both polar and hydrophobic domains on nanohelix formation. Our findings establish a platform to design and synthesize chiral functional materials using sequence-defined synthetic polymers.
The intent of Bio-inspired Engineering of Exploration Systems (BEES) is to distill the principles found in successful, nature-tested mechanisms of specific crucial functions that are hard to accomplish by conventional methods, but accomplished rather deftly in nature by biological oganisms.
During the past fifteen years significant investment has been made for the applications of nanotechnology in almost every aspect of life. Almost every area of research has projected improvements including biotechnology, bioinspired electronic, optical and radiological sensors, or a promise for the emergence of some novel device technologies. For such applications major focus has been placed on research nanoparticles, nanotubes nanorods and two-dimensional structures similar to that of graphene. Some near- term applications of nano- particles and nanowires have produced very promising results for better synthesis of energy storage materials, design of biologically active composites like apatites, laser host crystals, photodetectors and sensor materials for radiation detection. To achieve desired morphologies, nanomaterials can be utilized some organic melt and orient the grains by the directional solidification method. The organic treated materials produce different characteristics than coarsened oxide materials. The focus is also understanding the morphology and performance function in human organs that occur because of aging or disease, and responses to interventions. We annealed to determine the changes in morphologies and hence effect of aging. In this presentation, we will discuss correlation between the designed composition, micromorphology and the performance parameters of nanomaterials. To understand the mechanism of formation of nanoparticles, nanoboloids, fibers experimental details and observations on the of multinary compounds will be presented. These observations on the transition of nanomorphology can highlight the mechanism of the phase transition in some oxides and selenides.
The multidisciplinary concept of "bioinspired engineering of exploration systems" (BEES) is described, which is a guiding principle of the continuing effort to develop biomorphic explorers as reported in a number of articles in the past issues of NASA Tech Briefs. The intent of BEES is to distill from the principles found in successful nature-tested mechanisms of specific crucial functions that are hard to accomplish by conventional methods but that are accomplished rather deftly in nature by biological organisms. The intent is not just to mimic operational mechanisms found in a specific biological organism but to imbibe the salient principles from a variety of diverse bio-organisms for the desired crucial function. Thereby, we can build explorer systems that have specific capabilities endowed beyond nature, as they will possess a combination of the best nature-tested mechanisms for that particular function. The approach consists of selecting a crucial function, for example, flight or some selected aspects of flight, and develop an explorer that combines the principles of those specific attributes as seen in diverse flying species into one artificial entity. This will allow going beyond biology and achieving unprecedented capability and adaptability needed in encountering and exploring what is as yet unknown. A classification of biomorphic flyers into two main classes of surface and aerial explorers is illustrated in the figure, with examples of a variety of biological organisms that provide the inspiration in each respective subclass. Such biomorphic explorers may possess varied mobility modes: surface-roving, burrowing, hopping, hovering, or flying, to accomplish surface, subsurface, and aerial exploration. Preprogrammed for a specific function, they could serve as one-way communicating beacons, spread over the exploration site, autonomously looking for/at the targets of interest. In a hierarchical organization, these biomorphic explorers would report to the next level of exploration mode (say, a large conventional lander/rover) in the vicinity. A widespread and affordable exploration of new/hazardous sites at lower cost and risk would thus become possible by utilizing a faster aerial flyer to cover long ranges and deploying a variety of function- specific, smaller biomorphic explorers for distributed sensing and local sample acquisition. Several conceptual biomorphic missions for planetary and terrestrial exploration applications have been illustrated in "Surface-Launched Explorers for Reconnaissance/ Scouting" (NPO-20871), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 26, No. 4 (April, 2002), page 69 and "Bio-Inspired Engineering of Exploration Systems," Journal of Space Mission Architecture, Issue 2, Fall 2000, pages 49-79.
Here, the nominally trigonal, pseudo-Jahn-Teller (PJT)-active, S = ½ N 2 -bound transition-metal complexes, P 3 E M(N 2 ), M = Fe, Co, with three in-plane phosphine-ligands and axial donors, E = Si, B, C, include functional nitrogenase models that catalyze reduction of N 2 to NH 3 . We applied EPR, 31 P ENDOR spectroscopy and DFT computations to characterize the PJT-induced distortions of four selected P 3 E M(N 2 ), revealing how the metal-ion and axial ligand E together tune both PJT dynamics and N 2 activation for reduction. Comparisons reveal an unrecognized correlation between PJT distortion, M-E bond elasticity, and N 2 activation, providing guidelines for designing bioinspired N 2 -reduction catalysts.
Synthetic polymers are highly customizable with tailored structures and functionality, yet this versatility generates challenges in the design of advanced materials due to the size and complexity of the design space. Thus, exploration and optimization of polymer properties using combinatorial libraries has become increasingly common, which requires careful selection of synthetic strategies, characterization techniques, and rapid processing workflows to obtain fundamental principles from these large data sets. Herein, we provide guidelines for strategic design of macromolecule libraries and workflows to efficiently navigate these high-dimensional design spaces. We describe synthetic methods for multiple library sizes and structures as well as characterization methods to rapidly generate data sets, including tools that can be adapted from biological workflows. We further highlight relevant insights from statistics and machine learning to aid in data featurization, representation, and analysis. This Perspective acts as a “user guide” for researchers interested in leveraging high-throughput screening toward the design of multifunctional polymers and predictive modeling of structure–property relationships in soft materials.
This paper details the development and demonstration of an autonomous aerial vehicle embodying search and find mission planning and execution srrategies inspired by foraging behaviors found in biology. It begins by describing key characteristics required by an aeria! explorer to support science and planetary exploration goals, and illustrates these through a hypothetical mission profile. It next outlines a conceptual bio- inspired search and find autonomy architecture that implements observations, decisions, and actions through an "ecology" of producer, consumer, and decomposer agents. Moving from concepts to development activities, it then presents the results of mission representative UAV aerial surveys at a Mars analog site. It next describes hardware and software enhancements made to a commercial small fixed-wing UAV system, which inc!nde a ncw dpvelopnent architecture that also provides hardware in the loop simulation capability. After presenting the results of simulated and actual flights of bioinspired flight algorithms, it concludes with a discussion of future development to include an expansion of system capabilities and field science support.
A new approach called bioinspired engineering of exploration systems (BEES) and its value for solving pressing NASA and DoD needs are described. Insects (for example honeybees and dragonflies) cope remarkably well with their world, despite possessing a brain containing less than 0.01% as many neurons as the human brain. Although most insects have immobile eyes with fixed focus optics and lack stereo vision, they use a number of ingenious, computationally simple strategies for perceiving their world in three dimensions and navigating successfully within it. We are distilling selected insect-inspired strategies to obtain novel solutions for navigation, hazard avoidance, altitude hold, stable flight, terrain following, and gentle deployment of payload. Such functionality provides potential solutions for future autonomous robotic space and planetary explorers. A BEES approach to developing lightweight low-power autonomous flight systems should be useful for flight control of such biomorphic flyers for both NASA and DoD needs. Recent biological studies of mammalian retinas confirm that representations of multiple features of the visual world are systematically parsed and processed in parallel. Features are mapped to a stack of cellular strata within the retina. Each of these representations can be efficiently modeled in semiconductor cellular nonlinear network (CNN) chips. We describe recent breakthroughs in exploring the feasibility of the unique blending of insect strategies of navigation with mammalian visual search, pattern recognition, and image understanding into hybrid biomorphic flyers for future planetary and terrestrial applications. We describe a few future mission scenarios for Mars exploration, uniquely enabled by these newly developed biomorphic flyers.
In neurodegenerative diseases, polymorphism and supramolecular assembly of β-sheet amyloids are implicated in many different etiologies and may adopt either a left- or right-handed supramolecular chirality. Yet, the underlying principles of how sequence regulates supramolecular chirality remains unknown. Here, we characterize the sequence specificity of the central core of amyloid-β 42 and design derivatives which enable chirality inversion at biologically relevant temperatures. We further find that C-terminal modifications can tune the energy barrier of a left-to-right chiral inversion. Leveraging this design principle, we demonstrate how temperature-triggered chiral inversion of peptides hosting therapeutic payloads modulates the dosed release of an anticancer drug. These results suggest a generalizable approach for fine-tuning supramolecular chirality that can be applied in developing treatments to regulate amyloid morphology in neurodegeneration as well as in other disease states.