They create the first robotic bee to pollinate the fields

Polish scientists design a miniaturized dron able to find a male flower, collect its pollen and transfer it to the female to fertilize it

  Scientists from Warsaw Polytechnic University have created the first robotic bee designed to artificially pollinate, a miniaturized dron that is able to find a flower, pick up its pollen, and transfer it carefully from the male to the female flower to fertilize it.

This robotic insect has already been successfully tested in the field and its ability to pollinate is offered as a "hopeful alternative" to face the constant reduction of the world population of bees, said its creator, engineer Rafal Dalewski.

   "Last summer we did the test and we already have the first seed obtained through this artificial pollination, so it is demonstrated that our robot can do almost the same as real bees," explains Dalewski.

Dalewski, however, acknowledges that he has not been able to design a drone that can produce honey, "although the technology advances very fast and each time it surprises us more," he jokes.

«It will not replace insects»

Of course, the pollinator robot "does not intend to replace insects, but to help their work and complement it," says this engineer, who refuses to assess who is able to pollinate better, if the real bees or their drone.

The truth is that this biodron not only helps nature, but also does it in an intelligent way, since it can be programmed to concentrate on a certain area and look for flowers of a specific type to pollinate, all through of a computer program.

The Warsaw Polytechnic has created two types of pollinator drones, one flying and the other terrestrial, both armed with a kind of feather duster that impregnates the pollen that they then distribute among other flowers.

The terrestrial has more autonomy of work and its battery is more durable, "so the farmer can quietly retire home and let the drone work until it returns autonomously to its source of energy."

Precision farming

Its creator states that these robots can also be used for a "precision agriculture" as "smart dosers" of fertilizers, fertilizers or pesticides, since they can be programmed to deposit certain quantities depending on the type of plant or location.

The university wants to put to work the first prototypes from 2017, and go to its production in series in two years.

The invention is especially significant if one takes into account that the mortality of pollinating insects, on which most crops depend, increases every year without knowing the causes.

Two decades ago a group of French peasants first drew attention to a phenomenon that was then unusual: the depopulation of hives due to the disappearance of bees, whose pollination depends much of the world's food production.

This phenomenon is already global, especially in countries with highly developed agriculture, and many scientists have been alerted to the effects of a world without bees.

In 2014, the EU carried out a first study of bee mortality that showed figures of between 3.5% and 33.6%, according to countries.

The bee is a source of pollination for both crops and for nature, if this does not happen the yield of agriculture would fall, endangering plant species in which the only means of pollination are bees.