Driverless Cars: How Our Bodies Can Inspire the Future

What can our bodies teach us about making your morning commute more enjoyable? How can your blood cells inform the future of driverless cars?

It turns out, the systems that nature has nature has spent billions of years perfecting can translate beautifully to the way we design and build feasible futuristic transportation!

Source: Seattle Municipal Archives // Flickr

Think about it. The way our blood moves throughout our bodies is a pretty efficient design. It fits hundreds of thousands of miles of roadways into our bodies, and then moves trillions of blood cells through them with little-wasted space, energy, or time. Imagine if getting to work in rush hour worked that smoothly!

For self-described “transport geek” Wanis Kabbaj, translating these natural systems to our highways, streets, and cities is not an experiment in distant, science fiction thinking. It is a reality we could see in the near future, and a dream powered by the driver-less cars of today!

So, buckle up, and enjoy this thought-provoking and possibility inspiring Talk from the TED stage.

Do you know about the TED stage? TED.com is one of the most interesting corners of the web and EWC features the best of their talks a couple times each month. If I do say so myself, EWC and TED are the only places I have found where smart people, curious and hopeful, can always come away transformed. Check out our list of Must-See TED Talks here!

The Nature of Futuristic Transportation

How many pyramids worth of time do we sit in traffic!

Admittedly, before watching this talk I was in the camp that saw a future of self-driving cars and futuristic transportation as a far-off daydream. I love this talk because it puts into perspective the possibility out there. It re-frames innovation in terms we can all understand, though the lens of our own bodies.

Source: Pixabay

We don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to figuring out how to move a lot of volume through a compact and efficient system. Really, the first step should be looking internally.

There are so many solutions like this out there. We simply have to change the way we look at the natural world. Not as something to tame, or as a place for the resources that make the future possible, but as a source of inspiration! Nature has already done the countless iterations and years of experimentation, why not use that?

The more we see biology as a source of inspiration, the more we inspire the possibility and innovation that makes the future unlimited!

Stay beautiful & keep laughing!

-Liesl