Blue sky thinking: robobees are mechanical reply to hive collapse

The tech industry’s desire to fill the skies is inexhaustible. Satellites orbit the Earth while start-ups build drones and flying taxis to ferry people and purchases at high altitude. Microrobot insects would fly closer to the ground but could have a more profound impact.

All year, Lex assesses business ideas and technologies that are already generating sales. In this column, we examine exciting ideas such as robobees that are still a long way from hitting commercial pay dirt.

The decline in global insect numbers is alarming. The widely referenced windshield phenomenon, in which drivers believe fewer insects are splattered on their cars, appears to be true. The UK’s Rothamsted Insect Survey has found that insect biomass caught in traps since 1970 is down by two-thirds in Scotland. In England the average is stable but is believed to have already fallen when the study began.

A 2019 UN study estimated that half a million species of insect face extinction due to rising temperatures and pesticides. While bee and butterfly numbers fall, some insects are flourishing. A report in 2020 led by researchers at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research found the number of midges was growing.

Scientists and tech companies believe they can change insect ecosystems by creating mechanical versions of the real thing. Bees could be particularly lucrative. Commercial honey bees pollinate some $15bn worth of crops in the US each year.

Researchers at the University of Stirling are building tiny robo-buzzers that can shake plant stamens and release pollen. Harvard University’s autonomous flying RoboBee can land and take off again, meaning it might be used for pollination and monitoring the environment. Tim Landgraf at Freie Universität Berlin hopes to change the behaviour of bees themselves. His robots perform bee waggle dances, directing colonies to safe sources of food.

Beyond pollination, tiny insectlike robots might carry out other tasks. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created electroluminescent robot fireflies for communication. Eventually they might be deployed in places real insects cannot survive, such as space.

Obstacles are sizeable. Tiny batteries run down quickly and robots lack a real insect’s sense of self-preservation. The odds of replacing a complicated biological system with a quick technological fix look slim.