The Robobee Project Is Building Flying Robots the Size of Insects (preview)

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Thousands of robotic insects will take to the skies in pursuit of a shared goal

By Robert Wood , Radhika Nagpal and Gu-Yeon Wei

LARGER THAN LIFE: This RoboBee is magnified to show detail; turn the page to view at actual size. Image: Travis Rathbone

In Brief

• RoboBees are flying robots the size of bees. Their size presents a huge assortment of physical and computational challenges. At such small dimensions, off-the-shelf parts such as motors and bearings will prove too inefficient, so the bees must employ specially designed artificial muscles to power and control flight.
• In addition, the tiny bees must think on their own, using miniature sensors to process environmental cues and processors to make decisions on what to do next.
• Like real bees, RoboBees will work best when employed as swarms of thousands of individuals, coordinating their actions without relying on a single leader. The hive must be resilient enough so that the group can complete its objectives even if many bees fail.

Not too long ago a mysterious affliction called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) began to wipe out honeybee hives. These bees are responsible for most commercial pollination in the U.S., and their loss provoked fears that agriculture might begin to suffer as well. In 2009 the three of us, along with colleagues at Harvard University and Northeastern University, began to seriously consider what it would take to create a robotic bee colony. We wondered if mechanical bees could replicate not just an individual's behavior but the unique behavior that emerges out of interactions among thousands of bees. We have now created the first RoboBees?flying bee-size robots?and are working on methods to make thousands of them cooperate like a real hive.

Superficially, the task appears nearly impossible. Bees have been sculpted by millions of years of evolution into incredible flying machines. Their tiny bodies can fly for hours, maintain stability during wind gusts, seek out flowers and avoid predators. Try that with a nickel-size robot.

This article was originally published with the title Flight of the robobees.

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