The Pollinators of the Future: Robotic Bees

One-third of the food we eat comes from plants that need to be pollinated, but more than half of North American native bee species are in decline due to pesticide use, habitat loss, climate change, and intensive farming practices. Nitin Sanket, an assistant professor in the Department of Robotics Engineering, is studying an out-of-the-box solution to this alarming trend: the use of robotic bees.

“A lot of conservationists are working to preserve bees, and that’s a good thing,” says Sanket. “But the climate is changing pretty drastically, so we need alternatives as well, including looking at other ways to pollinate things.”

Sanket and his graduate students are developing an autonomous flying robot with potential funding from a variety of sources, including military and environmental organizations. The current prototype is a small, 3D-printed black plastic cube that’s outfitted with four 2.5-inch propellors, a powerful camera, and a rechargeable lithium battery.

The existing model is 4.7 inches across—about the size of a hummingbird—but at 200 grams weighs about 100 times more than one of those feathered pollinators. It can quietly whir through the air while darting to avoid obstacles and turning to navigate narrow spaces, flying for a total of 5 to 7 minutes, depending on the type of battery it has and the type of movements it makes.

Sanket’s long-term goal is to create a device that’s small enough and contains enough power to fly independently in a swarm for many hours. The programming will be sufficiently sophisticated and nuanced so that the bot can successfully collect and transfer pollen from a variety of plants—bonus points if they can create a model that runs completely on solar power and fully biodegrades into the soil when its parts wear out.

Sanket cautions that he’s still many years away from a fully functional and environmentally friendly robotic bee, but he’s optimistic—in large part because engineers and researchers at other institutions are working on details that will help advance his project. Researchers at MIT, Harvard, and the University of Washington are tackling the mechanical challenges necessary to build a bee-sized robotic body. Meanwhile, in partnership with Yiannis Aloimonos and Cornelia Fermüller at the University of Maryland, Sanket’s team is perfecting the robot’s ability to smoothly and autonomously navigate around objects. In other words, they are building the robo bee’s brain.

But, notes Sanket, “You cannot use the same logic as you would for a human brain. And, obviously, we cannot probe into what bees are thinking. So we’re speculating.”

That speculation builds on existing entomological research into insect movement and behavior. Understanding how bees usually respond in specific situations helps Sanket and his team identify the many individual functions they need to program into the device’s cognition and autonomy.

Each of the two doctoral students and eight master’s students working with Sanket is tackling a different detail of the device. Specifically, they are working to improve the robotic bee’s agility, speed, flight longevity, awareness of objects, and ability to avoid crashing into objects.