FOCAS Project Ends After Using Robotic Bees to Infiltrate Hives

This article was prepared from the source material provided; it does not include independent reporting or interviews.

A five-year European research initiative called FOCAS (Fundamentals of Collective Adaptive Systems) came to a close this month, after researchers built swarms of robots designed to pass as real bees and zebrafish and take part in the animals' societies. The project's goal was to learn how social animals communicate. According to the source material, the robots gave researchers an unprecedented look inside a honeybee colony and may eventually be used to steer bees toward adaptation and survival as they face potential extinction.

The robots are the product of years of work in swarm robotics. Building a small drone capable of performing the bees' waggle dance was not enough; the researchers needed a team of tiny bots with a hive-mind of their own, able to move, act and learn as a unit rather than as a jumbled mess of machinery. Engineers from the University of Graz used artificial intelligence to evolve the robots' behavior to more closely resemble that of real bees as the drones themselves became more sophisticated. The team also got two robotic swarms to interact with each other, flying as cohesive units without individuals straying or colliding.

Those incremental improvements were aimed at a single objective: robo-spies advanced enough that real animals would accept, communicate with and even follow them. After being placed in a colony and acting as if they belong there long enough, the robots appear to pass as the real thing. While species-saving programs are not yet in play, the team's work shows that real bees will go along with the robotic insects' programmed behavior, and that an insider's perspective of a honeybee colony can help scientists understand which environmental factors are putting pressure on bees and other animals.

Beyond Pollination

The robotic "spies" could have uses beyond keeping bees alive, including managing livestock and agriculture. That may help explain why Walmart heavily invested in and patented similar technology earlier this year, according to the source material. Replacing dead honeybees with robotic pollinators is described in the source as both depressing and wildly impractical. Still, the swarms coming out of FOCAS can give a better idea of how animals like bees operate, and how best to help them survive as they face the prospect of their demise.