Biomimetics and its tools

Biomimetics, as the transfer of strategies from biology to technology, is an emerging research area and has led to significant concepts over the past decades. The development of such concepts is described by the process of biomimetics, encompassing several steps. In Practice, beneficiaries of the process face challenges. Therefore, to overcome challenges and to facilitate the steps, tools have been developed in various areas, such as engineering, computing and design. However, these tools are not widely used yet. This paper presents an overview and a classification study of more than 40 tools with qualitative criteria. The criteria included, for example, the year of development, the accessibility of tools, the facilitated steps of the process or their contribution to sustainability. The classification shows that certain steps of the process and their challenges are well addressed by the tools, while other steps are not. The presented results contribute to the proposal of an improvement of the state of the art, and they build the foundation for future theoretical and practical analyses. These findings could contribute to increasing the implementation of biomimetics in various disciplines in the long term.