This 'Bee' Drone Is a Robotic Flower Pollinator

The importance of honey bees is crucial to the existence of life on planet Earth, all through the vital function known as Pollination.

In northern America, the growth of up to 90 commercially crops is only possible through the pollination via honey bees, these crops include blueberries, melons, apples and broccoli,

A scholar who took a peculiar interest in this process wanted more of out there to physically understand the importance of honey bees to human life – So she decided to create a honey bee drone, to function as an educational tool, combining both technology and design.

Controlled by a smart device, “Plan Bee” designed to mimic is a personal robotic bee used to pollinate flowers & crops. Comparable to how bees transfer pollen from flower to flower, Plan Bee slurps up some pollen from one plant, and ejects it onto the flower of another plant thereby enabling cross-pollination.

 

The final version of Plan Bee was quite a long Journey, taking Haldewang around 50 design versions before she settled on the final one.

To keep it light weight, the bulk of the device is made from foam, a plastic-shell body, and 2 propellers to keep the drone in lift.

In order to suck up the pollen from the flower, each 6 sections of the drone has tiny holes, which is used to suck up the pollen while the drone hovers over. Pollen is then kept within the body of the drone until it is later used to cross pollinate.

"When you flip it upside down, it looks like a flower," she said, adding it was her way to honor a flower's role in pollination.

Plan Bee is in its initial stages, hence Haldewang is still fine-tuning the engineering side of the drone. However, she has patented the idea, and she is in hope that the product should hit the market in about 2 years.  To have a marketable product in about two years.

She went on to say:  "I would love to see people use it in their backyards and even create custom gardens with it," she said. "With an actual bee, it’s so small you don't notice it and how it's pollinating flowers. With the drone you can see how the process works."

"It is outstanding. The design is self-explanatory and it offers a very clever solution."

But is it practical? Its use in backyards as a teaching tool has potential, said Ermoli. However, the drone could serve a much greater purpose. "It could conceivably be used in large-scale farming, even in hydroponic farming."