An illustration of the bio-inspired flying bee. It has animal hairs coated with ionic liquid gel to... [+]
They may be small, but bees and other insects play a critical role in pollination and maintaining a natural balance in our environment.
On February 10, 2017, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the rusty-patched bumblebee as an endangered species, now found in only 13 states. Bumblebees and other pollinating insects help pollinate 75 percent of the fruits, nuts, and vegetables we eat and removing them from the equation could trigger a global food crisis according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The short term solution could lie with drones. Eijiro Miyako from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan (AIST) has built a bio-inspired drone that functions like a real bee. The hope is that robotic bees could help bolster pollination and ease the burden of the declining bee population.
Taking inspiration from the bee, Dr. Miyako took a small drone, added horse hairs across the bottom and then painted it with a ionic liquid gel so the pollen would stick. He flew the small drone, now simulating a bee, over a lily plant to gather pollen. Once the pollen was acquired, he flew the drone to a different flower and artifically pollinated that plant.
This is just a protoype and it will take some time before we could see their widespread use in agriculture. However, Miyako says that down the road, robotic pollinators equipped with artificial intelligence and GPS could also learn pollination paths of bees and provide more insight into the most efficient paths for pollination.
"I believe that flying robots and hybrid creatures are a promising approach to tackle the pollination crisis and decline of bees, but they're just one piece of the puzzle,"said Miyako. "In the long run, we need to look to the combination of robots and living bees to create the most synergy in solving this crisis."
The full research paper was published in the journal Chem.
