If you have ever wondered what the bee of the future would look like, here it is. Researchers at Harvard and MIT have spent the last seven years perfecting this robotic bee. For better honey? No. To help with the bee population? No. Simply to creature a futuristic bee that will sting us all when the inevitable robot uprising occurs.
Photo: Kevin Ma and Pakpong Chirarattananon
This is Robobee, a mechanical bee. This new video shows Robobee landing and perching sideways on a wall, just like a real bee does. That’s not all it does though. It can swim, fly, navigate obstacles, and hover.
The tiny robots weigh just 84 milligrams, nearly the same as a real living bee. They hope that this robot bee will be a good reconnaissance and communication drone, but in addition, they have hopes that it could one day be used as a robotic pollinator. You know, in case the real bees die off.
I don’t care what it does, I’m gonna swat it if I see it coming at me.
