Harvard's Robotic Bees Generate High-Tech Buzz

coondoggie writes "Harvard researchers recently got a $10 million grant to create a colony of flying robotic bees, or RoboBees, to (among other things) spur innovation in ultra-low-power computing and electronic 'smart' sensors; and refine coordination algorithms to manage multiple, independent machines. The 5-year, National Science Foundation-funded RoboBee project could lead to a better understanding of how to mimic artificially the unique collective behavior and intelligence of a bee colony; foster novel methods for designing and building an electronic surrogate nervous system able to sense and adapt to changing environments; and advance work on the construction of small-scale flying mechanical devices, according to the Harvard RoboBee Web site."

Comments

Missing an important benefit

[Iamthecheese]

They really should be trying to find something else: more reliable pollination. Yes real bees already do this but mass-produced robo-bees, besides being really cool, don't catch colony-dropping diseases.

Re:Missing an important benefit

[religious freak]

mass-produced robo-bees ... don't catch colony-dropping diseases

Who says? The minute a viable robo-bee is created, I'm guessing someone will be thinking up a robo-bee virus. (In fact, a robo-bee virus actually sounds kinda cool!)

Re:Missing an important benefit

[camperslo]

They really should be trying to find something else: more reliable pollination.

Yes! Perhaps they can even make a variety good at pollinating cherimoya. Apparently South America has some bugs absent in the U.S., so most have to resort to hand-pollination with a small brush or something to get good yields from a cherimoya tree. The fruit is delightful.

Re:Missing an important benefit

[ciaohound]

Then we'll all be installing RAV antivirus for BeOS.

Re:Missing an important benefit

[TheLink]

The first thing they will need is better batteries (or some other power source/store)

All that efficient low power electronics is nice and good. But if you're going to have a robot bee fly for more than say 15 minutes, you are going to need better batteries, or really tiny fuel cells, or a really strong wind/tornado ;).

When you look at that scale we are so far behind. Bees (or even tiny fruit flies) can fly about, navigate, avoid threats, find food, gracefully deal with minor damage and not least of all they don't run out of power that quickly while doing all of that.

As for mimicking colony behaviours and developing algorithms, there's no need to build robots for that. You can do it all in computers. If you haven't managed to simulate artificial bees well in computers, having a robot bee hardly helps.

What's the difference between Harvard and MIT?

[QuantumG]

Everything you do at MIT is pointless.
You don't actually do anything at Harvard.

Re:What's the difference between Harvard and MIT?

[melikamp]

This is not altogether pointless. This new data could help to finally settle the question:

To bee or not to bee?

I Know What We Could Do ...

[HiggsBison]

Um... um... teach them to spell! Robotic Spelling Bees! Woohoo!

Re:BEEEEES!

[camperdave]

My firearm is a flamethrower.

Clever?

[swanzilla]

Harvard's Robotic Bees Generate High-tech Buzz

said robotic bees also generate horribly obvious story title pun on /.

Re:Clever?

[mathx314]

Yeah, insect puns really tick me off.

Re:Clever?

[Crash24]

Yeah, insect puns really tick me off.

That's like saying arachnid puns bug me.

Re:BEEEEES!

[sexconker]

So your firearm is a...fire...arm?

Re:the Wicker Man flashbacks

[atheistmonk]

Killing them won't bring back your goddamn honey!

Looking into the future...

[Bobfrankly1]

In the near future...
"5 Million dollars worth of robo-bees were destroyed when a robotic "Pooh Bear" attempted to retrieve honey from the hive. The Pooh Bear lodged itself into the only high opening, preventing the colony from being able to return to their re-charging stations. Their charge depleted, they fell to the ground and shattered. A "r.a.b.b.i.t." is reportedly en-route to retrieve the pooh bear."

Re:Looking into the future...

[Zordak]

Oh, crud. I'm a Winni-the-Pooh geek. Alright, it won't be pretty, but let's just get this over with. I'll do my best on the snarky, elitist fanboi tone, but I can't guarantee the results.

Sorry, n00b. Pooh Bear didn't get stuck in the hive when he was trying to get honey from the hive. First, the branch broke, then he used a balloon to disguise himself as a rain cloud. When none of that worked, and he concluded they were the wrong sorts of bees, went to Rabbit's house, invited himself to lunch, and gorged himself on honey. Then he got stuck in Rabbit's front entrance, and they had to wait for him to get thin again. When he finally budged, they all pulled on him until he popped out of the hole, launching him into the honey tree. That's when he plugged the bees' hole (and again gorged himself on their honey).

[HANGS HEAD IN SHAME].

Re:robotic honeybees

[Bobfrankly1]

Great...I can see it now. "Why does this tomato taste like....aluminum and carbon fiber?"

Re:Why Fight?

[ozmanjusri]

I, for one, welcome our new killer robotic bee overlords.

Hey, why not? We've had Microsoft's evangelism team infesting this place with the same goal for years.

A few more pointless drones generating high-tech buzzes won't make a lot of difference.

Military applications?

[RNLockwood]

This appears to have military applications, say a swarm of cheap cruise missiles that any country could afford. Other than that it is way cool.

Re:Military applications?

[marciot]

How much explosive power can you pack into a bee-sized missile? I doubt being able to set off firecrackers would qualify as military firepower.

Re:Military applications?

[TwistedGreen]

Exploding bees? That doesn't seem very useful given the small payload capacity. A more practical military application would be in targeted chemical/biological warfare. A sentry hive placed outside a military outpost could sniff intruders for a chemical friend-or-foe signature and, if it's absent, they could attack. This could even be used as a non-lethal weapon if the robotic insects injected a paralytic agent rather than a toxin.

The military applications are actually extremely interesting!

Re:Democratizing power of tech

[anagama]

I've been thinking similar things, and although I would be loathe to go back to the days of having to head down to the library and look through cards to find a book that answers a question I can get an answer for from google in seconds, the search trail I leave says a lot about me. Anyone who actually played around with the AOL search data realizes this.

My first thought when thinking about a network of tiny robots, was that someone in some government in this world will definitely turn this into a surveillance and data gathering tool. So while I love technology and the ease it brings to my life, I am also becoming more aware that my privacy is at much greater risk now than it was even as recently as the early/middle 90s. As technology becomes more pervasive, the ability to abuse it becomes more pervasive and I'm worried about that, in a non-Luddite fashion.

Re:"Ultra" low power

[mirix]

They'll just start adding them together.
UltraUltra low power
UltraSuperMicroMini low power
PicoPicoPicoPicoPower

Or we could skip all that and do what ST does; Embellish a bit and call it "zeropower" (which is trademarked no less).

Zeropower NVRAM - Which of course is battery backed, and uses... power.

Robotic Bees or Half Bees?

[Master Moose]

Half a bee, philosophically, Must, ipso facto, half not be. But half the bee has got to be Vis a vis, its entity. D'you see? But can a bee be said to be Or not to be an entire bee When half the bee is not a bee Due to some ancient injury?

Re:robotic honeybees

[thrillseeker]

Robotic bee spit ... now with flavor.