Harvard's Robotic Bees Generate High-Tech Buzz 105
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the electric-honey dept.
from the electric-honey dept.
coondoggie writes "Harvard researchers recently got a $10 million grant to create a colony of flying robotic bees, or RoboBees, to (among other things) spur innovation in ultra-low-power computing and electronic 'smart' sensors; and refine coordination algorithms to manage multiple, independent machines. The 5-year, National Science Foundation-funded RoboBee project could lead to a better understanding of how to mimic artificially the unique collective behavior and intelligence of a bee colony; foster novel methods for designing and building an electronic surrogate nervous system able to sense and adapt to changing environments; and advance work on the construction of small-scale flying mechanical devices, according to the Harvard RoboBee Web site."
Missing an important benefit (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Missing an important benefit (Score:4, Interesting)
mass-produced robo-bees ... don't catch colony-dropping diseases
Who says? The minute a viable robo-bee is created, I'm guessing someone will be thinking up a robo-bee virus. (In fact, a robo-bee virus actually sounds kinda cool!)
Re:Missing an important benefit (Score:3, Interesting)
They really should be trying to find something else: more reliable pollination.
Yes! Perhaps they can even make a variety good at pollinating cherimoya. Apparently South America has some bugs absent in the U.S., so most have to resort to hand-pollination with a small brush or something to get good yields from a cherimoya tree. The fruit is delightful.
Military applications? (Score:3, Interesting)
This appears to have military applications, say a swarm of cheap cruise missiles that any country could afford. Other than that it is way cool.
Re:Democratizing power of tech (Score:4, Interesting)
My first thought when thinking about a network of tiny robots, was that someone in some government in this world will definitely turn this into a surveillance and data gathering tool. So while I love technology and the ease it brings to my life, I am also becoming more aware that my privacy is at much greater risk now than it was even as recently as the early/middle 90s. As technology becomes more pervasive, the ability to abuse it becomes more pervasive and I'm worried about that, in a non-Luddite fashion.
Re:"Ultra" low power (Score:2, Interesting)
UltraUltra low power
UltraSuperMicroMini low power
PicoPicoPicoPicoPower
Or we could skip all that and do what ST does; Embellish a bit and call it "zeropower" (which is trademarked no less).
Zeropower NVRAM [st.com] - Which of course is battery backed, and uses... power.
Re:Military applications? (Score:4, Interesting)
The military applications are actually extremely interesting!