What topics are covered in bionics courses?
The approaches and methods are quite different in the various bionics groups in Germany, so there is no universally valid answer to this question. The following section gives a few examples of bionics courses of universities in Berlin, Freiburg, and Ilmenau. The major subject Bionik und Evolutionstechnik at the Technical University of Berlin aims at rectifying an apparent lack in the training of engineers. Often, a sub-standard level of biological knowledge is responsible for the dichotomy between nature and engineering. Bionics provides all prerequisites for a sound biological training for engineers. Students are exposed to biological and engineering knowledge at the same time. This makes it easier for engineers to approach biology and the parallel teaching saves valuable time for lectures. The current tendency is to pool biology-oriented subjects in engineering – like biological computer sciences, neural computing, adaptronics, evolutionary algorithms, biosensorics, or nanotechnology
