{"id":27203,"date":"2022-12-03t00:26:25","date_gmt":"2022-12-03t00:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.planetforward.com\/2022\/12\/03\/the-buzz-about-robotic-bees\/"},"modified":"2023-02-24t16:52:46","modified_gmt":"2023-02-24t16:52:46","slug":"buzz-robotic-bees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.getitdoneaz.com\/story\/buzz-robotic-bees\/","title":{"rendered":"the buzz about robotic bees"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
in front of hundreds of researchers at harvard university, mario vallejo-marin, ph.d., a professor of biology and environmental science at the university of sterling in scotland, stood anxiously and gave an impassioned speech about the challenges he has faced in studying bee pollination. he was looking for solutions that can aid in the fight to protect ever-declining bee biodiversity, and he was open to trying anything. however, the last thing that vallejo-marin ever expected was to fly back to scotland with the idea for a tiny robotic bee flying around in his head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
as vallejo-marin spoke to the harvard scholars in late 2021 about his goal to use a vibrating source to conduct a controlled study on the characteristics of pollination in different species of bees, an eager hand shot up in the audience. the hand belonged to noah jafferis, ph.d., a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the university of massachusetts. jafferis felt that he could help vallejo-marin achieve his goal by using a completely novel bio-robotic bee to replicate certain types of pollination in experiments. vallejo-marin\u2019s first thought was one of skepticism, as the two researchers come from entirely different scientific backgrounds, but the more they talked, the more they realized that their interests seem to intertwine perfectly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
in march 2022, within months of meeting each other, vallejo-marin and jafferis secured an $840,000 grant from the human frontier science program<\/a>, an organization that promotes international interdisciplinary research related to living organisms.<\/p>\n\n\n