Beyond Robotics, Materials, and Sensing: Unveiling Bioinspiration in Nondestructive Evaluation From “Nature’s NDE Specialists”

While bioinspiration research has led to advancements in fields such as robotics, materials, sensing, and neural computation over the past few decades, its application to more mission-oriented tasks, like nondestructive testing/evaluation (NDT/E), remains largely unexplored. Bioinspiration in NDT/E offers innovative approaches to advance current technologies by drawing inspiration from natural systems that perform similar tasks or processes. This paper explores three unique biological systems—aye-ayes, termites, and red/arctic foxes—referred to as “nature’s NDE specialists.” These organisms have evolved specialized food foraging processes to detect, characterize, assess materials, and detect targets in their environments without disruption, mirroring the goals of NDT/E methods such as tap testing and leakage detection. By studying these specialized processes, we can pioneer new NDT/E technologies or advance the current ones, by means of enhancing reliability, sensitivity, adaptability, and accessibility in challenging environments. Additionally, integrating bioinspiration into NDT/E education can attract a new generation of students, creating opportunities to address the workforce challenges in the NDT/E field.