Can robotic bees solve the planet’s pollination problem?
By Cally Salter
July 2020
Cast your mind back to science classes and you might remember hearing fascinating facts about bees. The queen runs the hive. Her workers (all female) build the hive and her drones (the males) are kicked out when winter arrives. Oh, and they also play an important role in saving the future of agriculture.
It is estimated around 30% of the earth’s entire crops are pollinated by bees. In their role as pollinators, bees have a fundamental influence on the natural ecosystem. But bee populations have been steadily falling over the past few years. Certain types of pesticides have been known to have an adverse influence, and there are many more unknown factors at play.
The decline of bee populations has naturally forced scientists to look for alternative methods of pollination. From this search, the concept of robotic bees emerged. In 2017, a group of researchers spearheaded by Dr. Eijiro Miyako, at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, created a robotic drone to much fanfare. Somewhat ironic due to organic drone’s light pollinating duties, the 4-centimetre long robotic replica is prolific in collecting and transferring pollen.
Harvard College followed up with RoboBees – officially entitled autonomous flying microbots – capable of artificial pollination. Weighing less than a tenth of a gram, these robotic insects are capable of self-directed flight, underwater swimming and even perching atop surfaces. Meanwhile, scientists at Draper Laboratory have designed microscopic backpacks which are then fitted to dragonflies to aid in these tasks.
You would be forgiven for thinking problem solved. But the development of robotic bees and backpacking dragonflies hasn’t quite ended the conversation. Miyako’s robots encountered an acute problem. The drones often damaged the flowers they were attempting to pollinate without a functioning autonomous system to control them.
These issues have only accelerated efforts to find alternative methods of pollination. Miyako has recently experimented with bubble pollination to make further headway. Soap bubbles with an optimised pH, calcium and assorted chemical solution were loaded into a gun and attached to machine pollinators. These bubbles were then shot onto fake lilies (only it appears because the natural variants weren’t in bloom) from a vantage of six feet high.
Of course, there remains complications to sort through. Flying robotic pollinators are still used to shoot the bubbles on their targets. Issues of precision and control persist. And unlike their natural counterparts, the artificial drones struggle to cope with rain and winds. Environmental considerations have not yet been calculated, and what of the moral ones? If robotic bees can do the job just as well as bees, could this be the first step in a ‘natural’ evolution seen in so many dystopian movies?
For now, it is clear that robotic pollinators will have a huge influence in crop pollination. A swarm of robotic bees is unlikely to completely replace their natural brethren. But the ingenuity of design suggests the fate of humanity’s agriculture is in a safe pair of antennae.
© 2020 Climate Just Collective