Bee Happy (Photo credit: Treesha Duncan)
The universities of
Sheffield and Sussex are working on a project to scan the brains of honey bees
and try and insert their natural instincts of smell and sight into tiny, flying
robots.
The result hopes to be
the first flying robot to act autonomously on these basic animalistic characteristics.
The bee bots, as we at
Downtime have started affectionately calling them, will be put through rigorous
tests, such as being made to find sources of smells, and the eventual goal is
to be able to create robots capable of search and rescue missions.
As an extra bonus, it
will also give scientists a better understanding of how the honey bee's brain
works.
Worth £1m of funding? Buzz off.
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