Robot pollinating agricultural crops like bees 'BrambleBee'

Honeybee is an animal that has an important role to pollinate agricultural crops, but the problem is that the number of individuals has declined in recent years. While a situation is expected to cause big damage to future agriculture, a robot " BrambleBee " which is responsible for pollination work like a bee instead is being developed.

[1808.10010] Design of an Autonomous Precision Pollination Robot
https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.10010

BrambleBee Robot Promises to Help Honeybees Pollinate Flowers | Digital Trends
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/bramblebee-robot-pollinate-flowers/

BrambleBee is a robot developed by a research team at West Virginia University in the USA. It is possible to run with the tire, check the position of the flower autonomously, confirm the position of the flower with the camera attached to the tip of the robot arm and pollinate with brush-like parts It is.

Although it is BrambleBee that it is still in the development stage, its movement can be confirmed in the following movie.

BrambleBee Greenhouse Pollination Experiment with QR Flowers - YouTube


BrambleBee goes through the flower bed of a planter planted with berry crops. On the upper part of the car body is a fisheye camera and "LIDAR" which can check the surrounding situation with a laser is carried and we will perform the surrounding mapping slowly while running.

Mapping completed by going around the flower bed. In the upper right corner of the screen, the position relationship of objects shown in green and the route BrambleBee traveled are shown.

After checking the position of the flower, this time turn the car body 90 degrees and take the position so that the flowers are positioned in front.

Then bring the arm closer to the flower captured by the camera and gently pollinate so as not to damage the flowers. Although it seems that the demonstration experiment using the QR code is still being carried out at this stage, in the future it is expected to be able to perform the work automatically by checking the position of the flowers with image recognition.

Although I can tell by watching the movie, the movement of BrambleBee is still slow, and it seems that it is still in a stage that takes time to realize the pollination work at the speed like a bee. However, by increasing the number of units in addition to speeding up the robot, it is possible to speed up the comprehensive work, and since the activity time is not limited like a bee, if efficient work becomes possible It is expected.

Meanwhile, Yu Gu, associate professor at the University of West Virginia who is engaged in research, emphasizes that BrambleBee is not a substitute for bees. "BrambleBee is supposed to work as a back-up when bees are exhausted, and work in beefes in greenhouses and outer space, which is impossible," said Mr. Gu.