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Swarms Of Flying Robot Bees Could Monitor Weather, Collect Data (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader quotes VentureBeat:
Native honeybees, one of the most prolific pollinators in the animal kingdom, are dying off at an unprecedented rate from Colony Collapse Disorder and threatening an ecosystem service worth about $15 billion. Supported by the National Science Foundation, the RoboBees project looks to minimize the loss of this critical resource with new microbots that can mimic the pollinating role of a honeybee... In a remarkable display of biomimicry, scientists have developed a flight-capable robot that's just half the size of a paperclip and weighs in at one tenth of a gram... The RoboBees project pushes the boundaries of research in a variety of fields, from micromanufacturing to energy storage and even the computer algorithms that control the robots by the swarm...
While the effect of a single robot might be miniscule, a coordinated group of hundreds, thousands, or millions of RoboBees could perform a host of unprecedented tasks. Aside from pollinating plants for agricultural purposes, the RoboBees could coordinate to digitally map terrain, monitor weather conditions, and even assist in relief efforts after a disaster, through data collection. While RoboBees are only intended as a stopgap measure for honeybee loss, the potential applications of the technology have the world holding its breath for the next breakthrough.
While the effect of a single robot might be miniscule, a coordinated group of hundreds, thousands, or millions of RoboBees could perform a host of unprecedented tasks. Aside from pollinating plants for agricultural purposes, the RoboBees could coordinate to digitally map terrain, monitor weather conditions, and even assist in relief efforts after a disaster, through data collection. While RoboBees are only intended as a stopgap measure for honeybee loss, the potential applications of the technology have the world holding its breath for the next breakthrough.
.. with no supporting facts. Important things like how long can you "fly" a device that weighs 100 mg? How do you control the device with even a 3 mph wind?
The article is so significantly short of fact it reads like a new kickstarter project (without the CG video).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hated_in_the_Nation_(Black_Mirror)
hmm, I think I recall a Black Mirror episode about this sort of thing..
.. with no supporting facts. Important things like how long can you "fly" a device that weighs 100 mg? How do you control the device with even a 3 mph wind?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/rise-insect-drones#page-2
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
do we really want little drones from dozens of different corporations swarming all around us with unknown purpose? let's outlaw them now, baiting and destroying them takes time and money
Trackerjackers.
#DeleteChrome
What could possible go wrong?
Bees are killing themselves rather than come into contact with Monsanto's product?
Requiem for the American Dream
What will Robot PETA say? And will Bender make them his flying monkeys? The horror, the horror....
I can't possibly foresee any drawbacks of plan based upon "Swarms Of Flying Robot Bees."
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
"hated in the nation"
It's chock full of friendly robot bees that monitor everything. Of course if you want to get the info you have to go looking for their floating honeycombs and maybe fight a few elder gods.
Roundup ready crops. Actually spray the hell out of them with round up, kills everything except the round up ready crop. And you eat that crap everyday.
Robot bee with a thin needle on it's head, coated in saxitoxin. Just crash into the target.
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This is a fine example of the garbage ideas flooding our lives. Go stick an ice cream cone to your forehead and pollinate the crops of the world yourself. It makes more sense.
This is stupid. Instead of replacing bees with shitty little robots, we need to stop doing things that are killing bees! Doesn't everyone understand that bee colonies dying off is a symptom of something bigger?
Given that we can't even produce an artificial muscle fiber that has the same/better characteristics as larger mammals I'm a bit dubious as to the being able to replicate the capabilities of insects, a few of which, until recent analysis, we couldn't explain how it was even possible for them to fly. For a more direct example look at the various power suits/robotic pack mules, most can't operate without power cables and whose that can can't go a tenth of the distance an animal can go. And things that fly generally need far better energy density.
We'll make them out of graphene and carbon nanotubes, and they'll be powered by those new 400% efficiency solar panels that some university lab 3D printed recently in conjunction with cold fusion. In combination with 3D printed stem cells they'll last 150 years between charging cycles and have enough lift to pick up a Smart car for short periods of time. Of course they'll use a mixture of quantum computing, machine learning, neural networks and the cloud for processing. They will also communicate using an FTL mesh network too. These new bees will be so efficient that 42 of them will be able to pollinate every food crop within a 5000 kilometer radius in 2 days.