Slashdot Mirror
Can We Pollinate Flowers With Tiny Flying Drones? (economist.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
An engineer in Japan has built a 1.6-inch "pollinator-bot" and successfully tested it in his lab. The drone's creator "has armed it with paintbrush hairs that are covered in a special gel sticky enough to pick pollen up, but not so sticky that it holds on to that pollen when it brushes up against something else," reports The Economist. They write that his experiments with the tiny drone "show that the drone can indeed carry pollen from flower to flower in the way an insect would -- though he has yet to confirm that seeds result from this pollination." While flown by a human pilot, next he hopes to equip the drones with their own flower-recognizing technology.
The Christian Science Monitor followed up with four experts, asking "Could a fleet of robo-pollinators replace, or at least supplement, the bees?" One said "There is no substitute for bees." Another pointed out that even if robo-bees are developed, some flowers will prove harder to pollinate than others. A third expert thought the technology could scale, though it would need to be mass-produced, and the engineers would need to develop a reusable pollen-collecting gel. But a fourth expert remained worried that it just couldn't scale without becoming too expensive. "I'm not sure that's going to be cheap enough to not make blueberries hundreds of dollars a pint."
Three of those experts also agreed that the best solution is just wild bees, because domesticated or not, "All they have to do is make sure to set aside enough land conducive to the bees' habitat."
The Christian Science Monitor followed up with four experts, asking "Could a fleet of robo-pollinators replace, or at least supplement, the bees?" One said "There is no substitute for bees." Another pointed out that even if robo-bees are developed, some flowers will prove harder to pollinate than others. A third expert thought the technology could scale, though it would need to be mass-produced, and the engineers would need to develop a reusable pollen-collecting gel. But a fourth expert remained worried that it just couldn't scale without becoming too expensive. "I'm not sure that's going to be cheap enough to not make blueberries hundreds of dollars a pint."
Three of those experts also agreed that the best solution is just wild bees, because domesticated or not, "All they have to do is make sure to set aside enough land conducive to the bees' habitat."
Apparently after getting a laughing face for a president (orange instead of blue), more Black Mirror episodes are coming true.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hated_in_the_Nation_(Black_Mirror)
Sure would take a lot of drones. It might be easier to genetically engineer the bees to have genes to resist whatever is killing them - insecticide or parasites - by splicing in genes from bee species that are resistant but suboptimal for pollination. Bees are basically self replicating drones that can refuel and rebuild themselves from products supplied by the very flowers they are pollinating.
But worst case scenario - if the bees all become extinct - we could use drones instead.
This is about the third or forth slashdot story I've seen that was covered in a "Black Mirror" episode. Now I am really worried about the one with the politician and the pig ...
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Wait -- that sounds exactly like bees. How about we promote the bees, rather than replace them with robots?
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
"All they have to do is make sure to set aside enough land conducive to the bees' habitat."
When one looks at all the dense pack housing going up, destroying entire forests and paving over every blade of grass, it's not surprising the bees are dying out. What do you expect when all one sees is acre upon acre of asphalt and concrete?
I drive by developments which have been up for years and all I see are scraggily trees and, if very lucky, a single, solitary bed of flowers at someone's house. The rest are simply plots of grass with a house on them.
Humans have done this repeatedly over the centuries, destroy habitat, then wonder why animals die off. Considering we're supposed to be the smartest animal on the planet you'd think we would have learned by now.
Bots do it... drones do it ...
Even educated phones do it!
Let's do it
“Every year, in late winter or early spring, some 3,000 trucks drive across the United States carrying around 40 billion bees to California’s Central Valley, which houses more than 60 million almond trees... Californian growers now spend $250 million a year on bees”.
"Farmageddon", Philip Lymbery with Isabel Oakeshott, p 63.
Californian growers do not spend that money for fun. They do it because otherwise they will have no crop. Good luck producing 40 billion tiny artificial bees. (Although if the idea goes forward I would buy shares in the manufacturer - just as you will notice that there has never been a massive government IT project that Oracle didn't love).
A simpler and more practical idea would be to stop killing off the bees, which do a great job entirely free of charge.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
For a start, bees require more skills and greater intelligence. And there is a lot less room to pack it into.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Can We Pollinate Flowers With Tiny Flying Drones?
Probably yes, but why not just spend the money on fixing colony collapse disorder? It seems much more efficient to just breed bees that are resistant to the varroa mite and the various viruses causing CCD and cutting down on pesticide use. If necessary it must be possible to introduce genes from resistant species of bees into vulnerable bee species elsewhere.
The economics that drive the planet's destruction are far, far outpacing our technology to do anything about it.
It's going to be some fucking expensive produce to warrant swarms of nano pollenator bots where bees used to do these things for free... fresh fruit will be a technological wonder where once it literally grew on trees.
It's shameful that we invest in this idea while we collectively ignore the massive loss of species/habitat to fuel our economic paradigms. Perhaps our extinction is earned more than any other.
These drones would not replace bees. Bees pollinate randomly, and that can be a problem when you need targeted pollination to produce hybrid seeds. Hybrid seeds are often expensive because hand pollination is used. These drones could automate that, and may be cheap enough that individual farmers could produce their own hybrids.
Anyway, the engineer who said, that in order to scale, these may have to be mass-produced, certainly has an incisive intellect. That guy should be promoted immediately, since nothing is more important than a firm grip on the obvious.
These drones could prove useful in hydroponic and other greenhouse-based agriculture where bees are generally not present. The current solutions mostly involve humans walking around with either paintbrushes (for plants which cross-pollinate, like cucumbers) or portable blowers (for plants with flowers that self-pollinate, like tomatoes).
#DeleteChrome
...we could just stop killing all the bees.
Depending on the facility it would probably just be cheaper to construct a building with an integral bridge-crane, with the 'tooling' to collect pollen and redistribute it on the end of a shaft hanging from that bridge crane. The shaft could be repositioned in all three axes, swiveled, and possibly angled depending on what's needed to reach the various flowers.
I can see several other advantages to this too. First, a large production floor could benefit from having a bridge crane anyway, as it allows whole rows of product to be moved around without having to maintain large aisles, so that more product can be present in a given square footage, so the bridge crane does double-duty, sometimes acting for pollination, sometimes acting for materiel handling. Second, it may be possible to use tubing and vacuum to collect pollen to a central point before redistributing, without requiring flying bots to constantly return to their docks. Third, if any other plant maintenance tasks are required, such as soil sample collection or other monitoring, not being limited to the capabilities of a quadcopter or other drone would probably make those tasks easier.
Granted this is assuming that hybridization is taking place out of the elements where the environment is controlled, both to increase yields and to ensure that no cross-contamination from natural or semi-natural pollination happens. If this is being done out in farm fields then that changes the equation.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Perhaps we should just bring in some cheap H1-Bees to take care of the pollination problem.
Depending on the facility it would probably just be cheaper to construct a building with an integral bridge-crane
Are you serious? You really believe that a building size industrial gantry system would "probably" be cheaper than a 2 gram drone?
Second, it may be possible to use tubing and vacuum to collect pollen to a central point before redistributing, without requiring flying bots to constantly return to their docks.
Bees don't return to their hive after each flower, so there is no reason for drones to do that either.
so why not both? Here in the States though it's hard convincing the population that this kind of science (the kind that doesn't pay off _right_now_) is worth doing. It was all well and good when we were fighting commies but we don't need science to fight terrorists. So NASA's budget gets cut for another round of tax cuts & shelters and we just elected an Administration that doesn't believe in governing...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It's amazing how quickly forget that messing with nature usually has dire consequences. Imported species (intentional or otherwise) have caused a tremendous amount of extinction events. Messing with bees gave us the Killer bee. Replace bees with flying drones, and kill off all the remaining bees.
Ideas are not always meant to be implemented, but are best served as ideas on the drawing board that we can say "glad we didn't do that one" about.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
That stuff you have been told about bee populations "collapsing"? More fake news.
Who was losing bees s reality? Some corporate bee providers had a bit too much of a monoculture going and had some issues. Wild bees never had a problem.
Everything generally you are being told to fear is a lie. Remember that carefully and apply it going forward.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wait, so now even the *bees* have to worry about losing their jobs to robots? Cripes.
not eliminating the underlying reasons and - in case it would work on a larger scale, who is making money on this BS? - manifest the incapacity of current systems to eliminate systemic malfunction endangering ... - A LOT !!! (wherever your conditioned imagination allows you to to).
Can We Pollinate Flowers With Tiny Flying Drones?
Whenever a question is the headline to an article here, the answer is always no. It's the first fundamental rule of slashdot.
From what i've seen of the bees in our garden, they would have a specific preference for a flower of a particular species and even then only pick those flowerheads that were the highest first (maybe they have more sunlight/pollen).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
It is not a product. Its not even a prototype. Its just an idea.
No. RTFA. There is working prototype.
We can ignore your list of reasons why it can't possibly work, since it already does.
In the old days we'd have to do it manually
Table-ized A.I.
The drones could absolutely replace bees, the question is: at what cost?
Or, put another way, how many trillions of dollars is it worth to keep bees healthy and working?
Anybody with a little spare time can read up and start keeping a colony of bees, it will take a team of engineers decades to design the pollinating drone to a point where it could be produced at scale at any cost, and far more people producing the drones, producing the components the drones are made from, maintaining the fleets, recycling "dead" drones, etc.
Ignore a colony of bees and they might naturalize and just take care of themselves. Ignore a colony of pollinating drones and they'll decay into toxic waste.
Yeah, picturing a 1.6" drone flying in a stiff breeze - not.
It's in vogue now to believe that vertical farming will solve the problem of too many people for the usable crop lands.
I'd like to see an almond grove in an enclosed farm structure... can you say: $300 per ounce of almonds produced? Put another way: 4 hours of skilled labor involved in the construction, operation and maintenance of the almond grove structure for every ounce of almonds produced.
Does TFA imply that these things will be flying outdoors? That would be most entertaining to watch when a stiff breeze comes along.
The source is not "playing down" anything, it is giving you a total colony count for bees which has been INCREASING.
The other places you seem to trust are OVER-EMPHASIZING the absolute magnitude of colony collapse disorder - which BTW was so named as to scare as many people as possible, one big red flag you can use for just about any topic to determine if it's fake news or not.
The bees are just fine. What needs a lot of help are the people of the earth, led as never before to believe a tsunami of fake news meant to make them fear and turn over power (and money) to the elites of the world. Once enough money is "donated" (i.e. stolen) magically the problem has been solved, and the next crisis begins...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is it possible? Maybe? Should we do it? Probably not, considering there are currently 7 species of bees that are on the endangered species list. We should be very careful about knowledge that can be used to affect the balance of nature.
We'll make great pets
I've had a 1.6" pollinator bot for 40 years - in my pants!
Pollination is good and all, but I'd like to see a model that can also kill all the caterpillars in a chemical-free fashion while it's at it.
Missing bees, Amerrikens, eh? We've got plenty of them here in Europe because we're not as stupid as you are. Simple as that.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti