NSF awards Harvard $10 million for robot bees (video)

When we heard that the National Science Foundation awarded $10 million to Harvard to make a swarm of robot bees, our first thought was: "We could do it for half the price." Then we remembered that the university has been down this path before, including its robot fly program (whatever happened to that thing?) and might be the better choice after all. What does the NSF and Harvard hope to get for all that time and money? Aside from insight into such areas as distributed intelligence, robotic flight, and energy storage, a swarm of these bad boys could be tasked to do anything from battlefield spying to pollination (which might be necessary, with the way that real bees are vanishing at such an alarming rate). The RoboBee project is slated to run for the next five years. Video after the break.

[Via Switched]

See more video at our hub!

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 9th 2009 3:21PM]

I will not install the quicktime virus to view that video.

[TikiTeko Posted Oct 9th 2009 3:31PM]

I concur ! Give me Flash or give me bread !

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 9th 2009 4:02PM]

i second that

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 9th 2009 4:04PM]

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=quicktime+alternative&l=1

[ChaosEntity Posted Oct 9th 2009 4:16PM]

Let them eat silverlight

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 9th 2009 4:45PM]

F--- the video

agreed. no quicktime for me.

[Meekermoloko Posted Oct 9th 2009 4:55PM]

I have Quicktime and the video still doesn't play.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 9th 2009 5:02PM]

QT would be the only thing on your pc without a virus...

[lowdrag Posted Oct 9th 2009 10:05PM]

Bee glad you didn't see the lame ass video.

wait was it a spoof? on what?

[benahad Posted Oct 13th 2009 11:43AM]

What's all the buzz about?

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 9th 2009 3:23PM]

Might be useful for studies of bee communication via flag manifold curves.

[Meekermoloko Posted Oct 9th 2009 3:23PM]

Holy crap!

That thing has three stingers!!!

[Level 5 Posted Oct 9th 2009 3:38PM]

JESUS MOTHERHUMPING CHRIST ROBOT BEES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 9th 2009 3:24PM]

They totally stole the idea from Richie Rich......

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 9th 2009 3:26PM]

Cool, but they could have done better by awarding it to Barack Obama.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 9th 2009 4:30PM]

Now that was just morbidly obese.

I mean, that was just an awful pun there. No "good try" for you, sir.

[Mr Oos Posted Oct 9th 2009 5:01PM]

"Yo, President Obama, I know you just won the Nobel, I'm really happy for you, and I'm gonna let you finish...but Harvard had the best award of the week...the best!"

[MarcusMaximus Posted Oct 9th 2009 3:28PM]

Cool, now that this can pollinate plants, we can wipe out all the bees and replace them with robots. That way we get all the pollination goodness without them stinging us.

[timmy2000 Posted Oct 9th 2009 3:32PM]

Ya! Who needs all the crappy Honey!!

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 9th 2009 3:55PM]

who says they wont sting us?

[manifest3r Posted Oct 9th 2009 5:21PM]

We will reprogram it so the WILL sting and it'll be the ONLY thing they do! Get that magnetic flyswapper out of your basement cuz your gonna need it.

[manifest3r Posted Oct 9th 2009 3:35PM]

Oh where, oh where has my little bee gone?
Oh where, oh where can he bee?

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 9th 2009 3:42PM]

They gave that money to Harvard?... obviously they don't know about the AI teams at Carnegie Mellon, the distributed systems groups at MIT, or the robotics labs at Stanford. Money we'll never see again!

[Dolphers Posted Oct 9th 2009 3:43PM]

I like my women like I like my coffee... COVERED IN BEES!

[Maddy Posted Oct 9th 2009 3:44PM]

Now that the real bees have been disappearing en masse, we're trying to refill the void with robot bees?

Sounds like one more piece in the puzzle of robots taking over the world, one bee at a time!

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 11th 2009 11:11PM]

does harvard really need the money? i mean they are the richest college, with an endowment of $26 billion.

[UnixSystemsEngineer Posted Oct 9th 2009 4:25PM]

I read that as "NFS"

[MarcusMaximus Posted Oct 9th 2009 4:26PM]

From your username, I'd expect nothing less.

[Yan Posted Oct 9th 2009 4:26PM]

Oh god... we're not that far off from a real The Pain popping up and raising bees in his body. My money's on one of the Harvard scientists going loony and taking the job.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 9th 2009 5:00PM]

When did Harvard become not safe for awards?

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 9th 2009 5:58PM]

Too many nervous hand motions.. and he sounds like he is trying to whisper. nerdy and creepy.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 9th 2009 6:36PM]

I, for one, am appalled that it took this long for one of us to welcome our new robot bee overlords.

[Rick36 Posted Oct 9th 2009 7:46PM]

What happens when a swarm of these suckers get loose in Cambridge? A repeat of the African Honey Bee fiasco?


"Float like a butterfly,
Sting Like a Bee,
You can't hit,
What you can't see."

Muhammad Ali

[leafflash Posted Oct 9th 2009 8:02PM]

This guy needs a chill pill.

[Brendan H Posted Oct 10th 2009 12:33AM]

Cue Stephen Colbert's Threatdown:
"Robot Bees!"

[Pies Posted Oct 10th 2009 2:48AM]

Your video is b0rken.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 10th 2009 10:15PM]

Ummm, guys, they already did this in a Hallmark movie. Lets just say it didn't end well.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 11th 2009 6:47AM]

This is a great example of innovative technology, but should we not divert these resources to actually protect the bees we already have instead of replacing them for robotic bees? I wonder if these robotic bees will ever come to exist and work. I

This doesn't solve the problem this just diverts our time and resources to very costly project which is not sure of succeeding.