IMPULS is the Austrian action line to promote basic research for innovations in transport. The goal is to rapidly unlock scientific and technological findings and problem-solving approaches from the widest range of disciplines for use in the transport sector.

In transport technology, research and development using established methods and approaches often fails to achieve the desired effects. The complexity of the systems and the diversity of the requirements are increasingly harder to overcome. In this area, it has been proven in recent years that ”borrowing” methods, findings and problem-solving approaches from other disciplines is leading to new sets of questions and thus to a re-evaluation of familiar project approaches. One of these new avenues is bionics, which combines the fields of knowledge from biology and engineering. A second path lies in linking the creative industries with transport technology. These two approaches form the starting-point for the IMPULS action line. In the years ahead, those subject areas are to be supplemented with further interdisciplinary linkages.

Bionics – Nature as a Model

The made-up word “bionics” is understood as referring to an interdisciplinary field of knowledge at the interface between biology and engineering, the aim of which is to use principles derived from biological systems for technical applications and solutions strategies. Over recent years, bionics has increasingly established itself as an academic discipline in its own right, gaining in transparency and developing worldwide in the university and industrial environment into an innovative area of research. The approaches looming in Austria on widely differing thematic areas consist to date of relatively divergent individual initiatives. At many levels, there is still a prevailing ignorance over the “wealth of ideas in nature”. A survey of the Austrian research landscape revealed on the one hand significant interest and great willingness to discuss the issue of bionics, whilst on the other hand there is an important need to clarify and inform. Generally, the potential for using research findings from bionics in Austria is stimated very high. There is a high level of need for knowledge transfer from bionics to the individual fields of engineering in the transport sector. Accordingly, there is a significant need for consolidation, dissemination and information.

Contact

Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT)
1010 Vienna, Renngasse 5
DI (FH) Andreas Blust
phone +43 (0) 1 711 62 extension 65 3413
e-mail:  Andreas.Blust@bmvit.gv.at