Every so often a headline will shout about the coming of the robo-bees, with the vision of a dystopian future where drones, not insects, ‘buzz’ from flower-to-flower. In 2018 the University of West Virginia in the US developed the BrambleBee, which pollinates plants using a robotic arm. Israeli tech company Arugga claims to be the first company to commercialise a robot able to replicate buzz pollination in tomato greenhouses.
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[Dave Goulson, Professor at University of Sussex, is skeptical:] “Real bees are very good at pollinating, and they have been doing it for 120 million years,” he says. “So why on earth do we think we can do better by building little robots? It is nuts. But people are taking that seriously as an option.”Trillions of robo-bees would be needed to replace all natural pollinators, according to Alan Dorin of Monash University in Australia, a process he describes as unrealistic and economically impossible for most farmers. Robo-bees are environmentally damaging to create and dispose of, Dorin says, and they can pose serious risks to wildlife.
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Robo-bees may not be buzzing around our fields any time soon, but with the global agricultural robotics market expected to be worth $20 billion by 2025, technology-assisted farming that aids the environment is set to take off.
