Before you start building a robo drone bee, maybe consider just how many billions and billions of bees there must be in the world ... or were before Monsanto insecticides started wiping them out. There was an article yesterday regarding a protest from Cat about scientists who aren't 'watching the chickens' and this one is a case study in it. (Ithaka: So Who is Watching the Chickens?)
The current research resulted in a robo drone bee which can be used to pollinate lilies but they aren't capable of autonomous operations so the the robo drone bee is manually controlled. It really doesn't have that much more sophistication than a kid's slot car which now has servo motors. Think it through, mates. Will you expect Old McDonald to find a whole lot of robo bee drivers so he can get all the flowers pollinated on his farm?
Ed: it's bloody ludicrous.
As bees slip onto the endangered species list in the United States, researchers in Japan are pollinating lilies with insect-sized drones. The undersides of these artificial pollinators are coated with horse hairs and an ionic gel just sticky enough to pick up pollen from one flower and deposit it onto another. Far from replacing bees, the drones' designers are hopeful that their invention could someday help carry the burden that modern agricultural demand has put on colonies and in turn benefit farmers. The work appears February 9 in the journal Chem.
- SD: Sticky gels turn insect-sized drones into artificial pollinators
There's the specific pitch that this addresses the problem of endangered bees. There is some inventive science in it since the goo they're using for picking up and dropping the pollen is effective. It's the delivery mechanism which is rubbish.
This illustration shows a radiowave controlled, bio-inspired flying robot equipped with vertically aligned animal hairs coated with ionic liquid gel demonstrates flower pollination.
Credit: Dr. Eijiro Miyako
- SD
Note: if that's 'bio-inspired,' please do show me the organism which uses four propellors to fly.
Step right up, chill'uns. Once your head realizes what it's been doing and melts from using drones to bomb people, you can take up a new career as a robo drone bee driver. You can fly your little drone from lily to lily bringing them love and pollen. Think of the joy.
Until they're talking about swarm drones of several hundred to several thousand operating collectively but autonomously, they're not even close to emulating the functions of bees. While there's a distinct possibility that may become real, particularly with the new goo the researchers discovered, there's still a much bigger question of what problem are you trying to solve.
If the problem to solve is that bees are dying, why not send some drones to whack Monsanto and be done with it. The bees will recover when they're not being continuously poisoned.
The current research resulted in a robo drone bee which can be used to pollinate lilies but they aren't capable of autonomous operations so the the robo drone bee is manually controlled. It really doesn't have that much more sophistication than a kid's slot car which now has servo motors. Think it through, mates. Will you expect Old McDonald to find a whole lot of robo bee drivers so he can get all the flowers pollinated on his farm?
Ed: it's bloody ludicrous.
As bees slip onto the endangered species list in the United States, researchers in Japan are pollinating lilies with insect-sized drones. The undersides of these artificial pollinators are coated with horse hairs and an ionic gel just sticky enough to pick up pollen from one flower and deposit it onto another. Far from replacing bees, the drones' designers are hopeful that their invention could someday help carry the burden that modern agricultural demand has put on colonies and in turn benefit farmers. The work appears February 9 in the journal Chem.
- SD: Sticky gels turn insect-sized drones into artificial pollinators
There's the specific pitch that this addresses the problem of endangered bees. There is some inventive science in it since the goo they're using for picking up and dropping the pollen is effective. It's the delivery mechanism which is rubbish.
This illustration shows a radiowave controlled, bio-inspired flying robot equipped with vertically aligned animal hairs coated with ionic liquid gel demonstrates flower pollination.
Credit: Dr. Eijiro Miyako
- SD
Note: if that's 'bio-inspired,' please do show me the organism which uses four propellors to fly.
Step right up, chill'uns. Once your head realizes what it's been doing and melts from using drones to bomb people, you can take up a new career as a robo drone bee driver. You can fly your little drone from lily to lily bringing them love and pollen. Think of the joy.
Until they're talking about swarm drones of several hundred to several thousand operating collectively but autonomously, they're not even close to emulating the functions of bees. While there's a distinct possibility that may become real, particularly with the new goo the researchers discovered, there's still a much bigger question of what problem are you trying to solve.
If the problem to solve is that bees are dying, why not send some drones to whack Monsanto and be done with it. The bees will recover when they're not being continuously poisoned.
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