Abstract: With the advanced development of computer-based enabling technologies, many engineering, medical, biology, chemistry, physics and food science etc have developed to the unprecedented levels, which lead to many research and development interests in various multi-discipline areas. Among them, biomimetics is one of the most promising and attractive branches of study. Biomimetics is a branch of study that uses biological systems as a model to develop synthetic systems. To learn from nature, one of the fundamental issues is to understand the natural systems such animals, insects, plants and human beings etc. The geometrical characterization and representation of natural systems is an important fundamental work for biomimetics research. 3D modeling plays a key role in the geometrical characterization and representation, especially in computer graphical visualization. This paper firstly presents the typical procedure of 3D modelling methods and then reviews the previous work of 3D geometrical modelling techniques and systems developed for industrial, medical and animation applications. Especially the paper discusses the problems associated with the existing techniques and system s when they are applied to 3D modelling of biological systems. Based upon the discussions, the paper proposes some areas of research interests in 3D modelling o f biological systems and for Biomimetics.

Key words: 3D modelling, biomimetics, 3D scanners, 3D geometry computation, biological systems