RoboBees Will Soon Sting You- Scientists Developing Flying-bee Size Robots to Pollinate Flowers

(Photo : scientificamerica )

There is a huge fall in the honeybee population due to mysterious affliction called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD, which began to wipe out honeybee hives. 

These bees control most commercial pollination in the U.S., and their loss creates low production of crops due to low rate of pollination. In 2009, teams of Harvard and Northeastern University scientists considered seriously to create a robotic bee colony. 

Now these teams worked on a swarm of tiny RoboBees- flying-bee size robots- that could pollinate flowers and do the job of real bees if needed.

According to Inhaitat, "In 2009 the three of us began to seriously consider what it would take to create a robotic bee colony," the team leaders told Scientific America.

"We wondered if mechanical bees could replicate not just an individual's behavior but the unique behavior that emerges out of interactions among thousands of bees. 

We have now created the first RoboBees-flying bee-size robots-and are working on methods to make thousands of them cooperate like a real hive," they added.

Objectives of RoboBees Project

RoboBees size presents a huge variety of physical and computational trials. The bees, to power and control flight, must employ specially designed artificial muscles to overcome their inefficient motors and bearings.

In addition, the tiny bees must have freedom. 

In other words, they must freely think and act, using miniature sensors.

The biomimicking scheme, also known as the Micro Air Vehicles Project, aims to "push advances in miniature robotics and the design of compact high-energy power sources; spur innovations in ultra-low-power computing and electronic 'smart' sensors; and refine coordination algorithms to manage multiple, independent machines".

Like real bees, RoboBees will work best when employed as swarms of thousands of individuals, coordinating their actions without relying on a single leader. 

The hive must be spirited enough so that the group can complete its objectives even if many bees fail.

Moreover, scientists can use RoboBees for search and rescue, hazardous environment exploration such as a nuclear disaster sites, high-resolution weather and climate mapping and traffic monitoring.

(Source- Scientific America)

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