Japanese engineers have created a quadcopter pollinator

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    About a third of the world's food crops need help with pollination, but more than 40% of the insect species that play this role are threatened with extinction. Researchers were looking for a solution to the problem in various fields. Some scientists focused on how to protect bees and other important pollinators, while others began to look for clues outside the natural world.

    So some engineers have come to the conclusion that an army of robotic pollinators will help preserve crop yields. This thought guided the team of researchers in Japan during the development of a small drone capable of pollinating flowers.

    After examining honeybees , Eijiro Miyako , a senior researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and his colleagues realized that using a drone and a liquid ionic gel, you can collect pollen from one flower and place it on another. The scientists took as a basis a modified version of the available PXY CAM quadrocopter.

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    During the study on flies and ants, scientists realized that you can not just apply the gel directly on the smooth surface of a small flying robot. Instead, they needed something like a brush that collects pollen from a flower. Then the Japanese scientists glued a strip of fur to the surface of the drone, and then applied an ionic gel to it.

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    Previous attempts to create artificial pollinators have not been realized in any successful project, but Dr. Miyako succeeded. During the experiment, the quadrocopter flew to the lily flower, collected pollen from the anther on a brush and delivered it to the stigma of another flower.

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    Pollen collection

    The results showed that the drone is indeed able to transfer pollen from one flower to another almost as well as bees and other pollinators do. Scientists left to check whether the result of such pollination seeds.

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    Pollination

    At the moment, Miyako’s quadrocopters are operated by a human operator. In the future, researchers will need to develop a “vision” system that will allow drones to recognize flowers on their own. Today, visual recognition software is well developed, so scientists are confident that it will not be difficult for them to develop something for their offspring. However, how to fit a similar system, consuming dozens, and sometimes hundreds of watts of energy in such a small drone, the researchers do not report.

    The success achieved by the team of Miyako and other researchers is only the first step. Scientists can create a tool capable of pollinating plants, but they have yet to figure out how to apply the concept on a massive scale, necessary to make it useful for farmers.

    Now many farmers rely mainly on domestic honey bees. They live in dense populations - several tens of thousands of worker bees in each hive. It is obvious that the replacement of such an “army” by drones will require the investment of very significant amounts.

    Agricultural economists also share this opinion. Here's how they argue their point of view: if, for example, a producer of almonds pays a rent in the amount of $ 150 for one hive for 30 thousand worker bees, then approximately ½ cent falls on one bee. If the bees work in the grove for two weeks, then this amount comes to 0.035 cents per day. Thus, pollinating drones must drop significantly in price before they are able to compete with bees.

    Some experts also have questions about how quadrocopters will adapt to the structure of each particular flower, so as not to damage it. Despite the fact that the drone was able to transfer pollen from one flower to another, there are fears that the device itself could damage the flowers. A machine that bumps into a reproductive organ can actually “knock down” it or break the stigma.

    Skeptics say that the lily was chosen by scientists in order to facilitate the drone's task, because the shape of the flower does not interfere with pollination. In order to expand the field of application of technological pollination to small and more complex flower structures, drones should become more flexible in management. A team of researchers from the Microbotics Laboratory at Harvard University has already made RoboBee - a tiny drone that could be used for pollination.


    Another question scientists ask Japanese researchers is how to load a new “batch” of pollen after the drone has delivered its cargo to the stigma? Can I re-use gel on the villi? The answer to these questions is still impossible to get.

    Entomologists believe that the best solution to the problems of pollination lies not in technology, but in nature. In their opinion, the way out of this situation is the domestication of wild bees. “Savage bees” live a more solitary life than their tamed brethren and build nests in small holes in the ground or holes in old trees. Scientists are already making great efforts to tame them.

    But even without taming bumblebees or wild bees, farmers can take advantage of their pollination ability. All that is required for this is to allocate enough land favorable for the habitat of these insects.

    There is a third option at the junction of nature and technology - cyborg insects. In recent years, scientists have already learned how to manage large insects with the help of electric implants, but now science has gone even further. As part of the DragonflEye project, scientists can control the flight of a dragonfly using implanted optical fibers. All electronics necessary for autonomous navigation is packed in a small “backpack” on the back of a dragonfly, which is powered by a solar battery.

    Scientific work published in the journal Chem February 9, 2017
    DOI:10.1016 / j.chempr.2017.01.008

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