Are These Robotic Little Things The Future of Our Bees?

The bees are in trouble, meaning so are we.

Transcript

00:00Our planet's bee populations are in serious trouble.

00:07According to a recent University of Maryland and Auburn University study,

00:10even managed bee hives in the U.S. have lost on average more than 30% of their bees every year for the last 10 years.

00:16And bees are an important part of our ecosystem, pollinating the plants we need to survive.

00:21Which is why this tiny little device might be more significant than its small build size might indicate.

00:26This is what researchers at Finland's Tampere University call light robots,

00:30small pollen-carrying devices that are controlled by light.

00:33They model the robot from naturally occurring floating seeds,

00:36but these feature tiny hairs that gather pollen before floating to their destination.

00:40The whole device is controlled via light, which you can see here as the robot responds to changes in brightness.

00:46Lead researcher on the project, Haozang, had this to say about it.

00:49Superior to its natural counterparts, this artificial seed is equipped with a soft actuator.

00:54The actuator is made of light-responsive liquid crystalline elastomer,

00:57which induces opening or closing actions of the bristles upon visible light excitation.

01:02The next step, they say, is designing the bot to react specifically to sunlight,

01:06with the hopes that someday farmers might be able to release millions of these pollinators at a time,

01:10and let sunlight do the rest.

01:13Another thing that can create a good mix

01:15is creating a double wave of emissions from mass Tin точimaggee- fonctions.

01:17One of the initial mandates there are variousemu こ sortingたowiперв

01:25in Europe to continue with its TOMI.

01:27Let's hear that.