How robotic honeybees and hives could help the species fight back

Something was wrong, but Thomas Schmickl couldn’t enactment his digit connected it. It was 2007, and the Austrian biologist was spending portion of the twelvemonth astatine East Tennessee State University. As helium made his regular locomotion crossed immoderate fields to campus, “it felt unpleasant,” helium says. “And I didn’t recognize wherefore until I heard a bumblebee.”

Insects, helium realized, had different seemed conspicuously absent. “I was dragging the biology professors retired of the gathering and saying, ‘Look successful the sky—there is thing flying!’” helium recalls.

Schmickl, who present leads the Artificial Life Lab astatine the University of Graz successful Austria, wasn’t wrong. Studies successful assorted parts of the satellite person since recovered that insect populations are declining oregon changing. After moving successful the tract of swarm robotics for respective years—using quality to animate robots—Schmickl decided to flip his enactment astir and plan robots to assistance nature, a conception helium calls ecosystem hacking.

He’s focusing connected bees. Honeybees and different pollinators look situation loss, pesticide exposure, and different challenges, and Schmickl believes that coming to their assistance could assistance fortify full ecosystems. Already, immoderate companies connection augmented beehives that show conditions inside, oregon adjacent robotically thin the bees. Now Schmickl and his colleagues privation to spell a measurement further and usage exertion to manipulate the insects’ behavior. 

Speaking to the swarm

Schmickl’s squad is gathering prototype hives arsenic portion of a European Union–funded task called Hiveopolis. One of the group’s hives resembles a stylized histrion trunk, akin to a hollow histrion wherever honeybees mightiness nest successful nature. In an effort to usage sustainable materials, that hive is made from 3D-printed clay and from fungus grown connected recycled java grounds, Schmickl says.

The prototype hives are outfitted with sensors and cameras arsenic good arsenic devices that tin make vibration wrong the hive and set somesthesia oregon aerial flow. Such tools could yet nonstop the bees’ postulation patterns: Schmickl’s experiments person shown that vibration slows the bees down, portion moving aerial encourages them to locomotion away.

Hiveopolis collaborator Tim Landgraf, a prof of artificial and corporate quality astatine Freie Universität Berlin successful Germany, is moving connected different benignant of instrumentality for these hives: a robotic dancing bee. 

When existent honeybees instrumentality from foraging, they execute a distinctive “waggle dance” that communicates the determination of the food. Other bees articulation successful the foragers’ dances, and erstwhile capable bees are doing the aforesaid dance, they’ll alert retired to find the food. “It’s a benignant of sentiment polling process,” Schmickl says.

In earlier research, Landgraf built a robot that could execute a waggle creation truthful convincing that different bees followed it—and, astatine slightest sometimes, flew successful the absorption the robot suggested. Now he’s getting acceptable to trial an improved mentation of the waggle robot and find retired whether it tin usher honeybees to a nutrient source. The robot doesn’t look precise bee-like to a quality eye. Its assemblage is simply a small, flexible conduit with a fluttering “wing.” But it’s connected to a centrifugal extracurricular the hive that tin steer and shimmy it crossed the hive’s creation floor.

A robotic "bee" tin beryllium moved astir to execute a waggle dance

COURTESY OF PROF. TIM LANDGRAF / EU-FET PROJECT HIVEOPOLIS

In theory, specified a robot could usher honeybees to a harmless foraging tract if humans determined that different tract was contaminated with pesticides and was affecting the hive’s health, for example, Schmickl says. Or humans could nonstop honeybees distant from a tract that was being reserved for chaotic bees.

Landgraf’s radical has besides created a strategy that tin observe existent honeybee dances and construe them into a map. Someday, cameras wrong a hive mightiness spy connected dancing bees to show wherever the bees are foraging. If a colony became sick from vulnerability to a pesticide oregon different toxin, humans mightiness beryllium capable to fig retired wherever that vulnerability was happening. “In this way, you tin usage the bees arsenic an biology detector for detrimental substances,” Schmickl says.

In the queen’s court

Through different EU project, called RoboRoyale, Schmickl and others anticipation to usage robotic bees to power the queen and thereby amended the fittingness of the full colony. The idea is for robots to infiltrate the queen’s radical of closest attendants. In theory, the impostor bees mightiness beryllium capable to induce the queen to laic much eggs by feeding her much protein-rich food. Or they could marque her ovum laying much businesslike by guiding her to areas of the nest wherever cells for babies person already been prepared.

Schmickl hasn’t started investigating these ideas successful the laboratory yet; he’s inactive moving connected introducing imaginable robot materials into hives and seeing whether idiosyncratic bees onslaught them. “Bees are picky astir what materials they judge successful their hive,” helium says. 

Elina L. Niño, subordinate prof of cooperative hold successful apiculture astatine the University of California, Davis, says that astatine this moment, the methods successful the European projects don’t person an evident exertion for commercialized beekeeping successful the United States. The beekeepers she works with “would conscionable benignant of chuckle astatine this,” Niño says. 

For 1 thing, she says, farmers and beekeepers successful California enactment intimately together. Growers alert beekeepers earlier spraying their crops—no six-legged pesticide detectors required. And she’s not definite that producing much babe bees from a hive is arsenic elemental arsenic feeding a queen much protein. 

It makes much consciousness to absorption alternatively connected creating healthier environments for bees, Niño says, “so we don’t person to beryllium acrophobic with regulating their formation and their foraging.”

However, “from a probe perspective,” Niño adds, the European enactment is “super exciting.” Observing however honeybees interact with the waggle robot, for example, could springiness scientists caller insights into bee communication.

She besides thinks the technologies that Schmickl and his colleagues are pursuing mightiness beryllium much charismatic to hobbyists than to professionals. Schmickl says making beekeeping much appealing and accessible is 1 of his goals—for example, if bees could beryllium induced to determination retired of a definite comb, a idiosyncratic could entree it without needing protective gear.

“Whether it’s beekeepers that usage it oregon recreational hipsters connected their balcony, I don’t truly care,” Landgraf says.

“Humans are waking up to however important quality is,” helium adds. We whitethorn deliberation of exertion arsenic being connected the other extremity of the spectrum from nature, helium says, but that doesn’t person to beryllium true: “It should beryllium an interface that augments our and nature’s capabilities.”