Dancing robot honeybees are being developed to save the hives
Scientists are trying to help solve population decline by deploying robotic honeybees to infiltrate hives.
Scientists are trying to help solve population decline by deploying robotic honeybees to infiltrate hives. It’s like a surprisingly wholesome episode of Black Mirror.
The project is being led by Tim Landgraf, Professor of artificial and collective intelligence at Freie Universität Berlin in Germany, and it’s just one of several projects being funded by the European Union’s Hiveopolis which aims to build futuristic bee hives.
Another big player in this space is Thomas Schmickl from Artificial Life Lab at the University of Graz. He refers to the research as ecosystem hacking, where bio-inspired and bio-mimetic robots can enter an ecosystem to help slow down or reverse its decay.
While studies have shown that insect populations are declining or changing throughout the world, Schmickl has a particular focus on bees. Bee populations are under threat due to a number of factors such as disease, parasites, habitat destruction, the use of agricultural chemicals and a decline in commercial beekeeping. As pollinators, this poses a threat to food security worldwide.
One of the projects the team is working on is a prototype hive that is made from 3D-printed clay and fungus grown on recycled coffee grounds. It’s kitted with cameras and sensors as well as a device that recreates vibrations, temperature and airflow in real hives.
The idea is to monitor and ultimately direct bee behaviour and patterns.
Robotic dancing honeybees to the rescue
Tim Landgraf is taking this a step further with full-blown hive infiltration through the use of a robotic dancing honeybee. While that sounds adorable, it’s for a very good reason — to help point hives towards food sources.
According to MIT’s Technology Review, real world honeybees perform a ‘waggle dance’ when they return from foraging. Same, to be honest.
The waggle tells the rest of the hive the location of the food, and if enough bees join in the dance they’ll fly out to chow down for themselves.
An early prototype was convincing enough to result in bees following suit and occasionally flying in the suggested direction. But Landgraf and the team are hopping it can be improved to direct real bees straight to the food source.
This enables them to direct the bees to safe foraging sites free of pesticides. This is where the hives cameras are also integral, as they can monitor bee behaviour and help determine if they are becoming sick due to foraging at a particular site. The robot bees would then be able to direct them to somewhere safer.
“In this way, you can use the bees as an environmental detector for detrimental substances,” Schmickl said.
Another project, RoboRoyale, that the team is working on also hopes to use robot bees to infiltrate the queen’s court. Oh the intrigue!
Essentially, the robots would attempt to join a queen’s closest attendants to impact her behaviour and thus strengthen the entire hive. Some of the aims include feeding her more protein-rich nutrients to encourage increases egg growth, or even making egg laying more efficient by leading her to better areas of the nest.
Now if you were hoping that the robot bees were cute, you’d be wrong. In fact, they look nothing like traditional bees. In its current state it’s a small tube that’s reminiscent of a pill, and it’s fitted with a fluttering wing connected to an outside motor.
Here in Australia agtech is also being deployed to help protect our bee populations. B Honey and Bega Cheese Limited have collaborated on the Purple Hive Project to help protect honeybees from Varroa mite, and Byron Bay startup Flow Hive has also invented a revolutionary Flow System to better protect bees during the honey extraction process.
