RoboBee

The goal of the RoboBee project is to make a fully autonomous swarm of flying robots for applications such as search and rescue, surveillance and artificial pollination.

[5] Achieving controlled flight proved exceedingly difficult, requiring the efforts of a diverse group: vision experts, biologists, materials scientists, electrical engineers.

[2] During the summer of 2012, the researchers solved key technical challenges allowing their robotic creation, nicknamed RoboBee, to take its first controlled flight.

[2] For the wings, they built "artificial muscles" using a piezoelectric actuator - a thin ceramic strip that contracts when electric current is run across it.

[7] Currently, the RoboBee has onboard vision sensors, but the data requires transmission to a tethered "brain subsystem" for interpretation.

[9] If researchers solve the microchip and power issues, it is believed that groups of RoboBees utilizing swarm intelligence will be highly useful in search and rescue efforts and as artificial pollinators.

To achieve the goal of swarm intelligence, the research team has developed two abstract programming languages – Karma which uses flowcharts, and OptRAD which uses probabilistic algorithms.

[5] Potential applications for individual or small groups of RoboBees include covert surveillance and the detection of harmful chemicals.

[3] Previously, parties such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have raised concerns about the civilian privacy impacts of military and government use of miniature flying robots.

[12][13] According to the project researchers, the "pop-up" manufacturing process would enable fully automated mass production of RoboBees in the future.