The term “laser bionics” refers to an interdisciplinary research approach pursued at the Laserinstitut Hochschule Mittweida, in which functionalities observed in nature are studied and applied to technical problems. One example of this is the flow-optimized microstructure of shark skin. The microscale grooves on the sharkscales, also known as riblets, enable the shark to move through the water in an energy-efficient manner.

As part of the STELLAR project, founded by the European Union, a flow-optimized shark skin like microstructure was processed onto the rotor blades of a ship propeller model using an ultrashort pulse laser source. It could be proven in the towing tank of the Vienna Model Basin, that the efficiency of the propeller increased by 3.41% in the operating point making this technology highly interesting for industry, especially shipbuilding industry and other fluid dynamic applications.