(Describer) Streams of light collide to create a globe filled with water. Title: Science Nation.
[explosion]
(male narrator)
It all started with a TV show,
Silence of the Bees,
about honey bee populations
in steep decline.
Electrical engineers,
Gu-Yeon Wei and Rob Wood
at Harvard University
saw a challenge.
And so began the creation
of the Robobee,
a miniature flying robot.
(Wood)
We have to develop
all of the physical components
from scratch,
(Describer) Wood:
like how they talk
to each other,
coordinate algorithms for having
a colony of them work together.
(Wood)
This is where we do
play tests.
(narrator)
With support from the
National Science Foundation
and its program called
Expeditions in Computing,
Wood assembled
a diverse team of collaborators
to get the Robobee project
off the ground.
(Describer) The tiny machine with flapping wings is shown in slow-motion.
(Wood)
Expeditions in Computing
is looking for
new ways of thinking about
different, important problems
in computer science.
(narrator)
One challenge, to design
the tiny folding exoskeleton
that houses the bee's wings,
motors, and electronics.
Inspired, in many ways,
by children's pop-up books,
we take a variety
of different materials
and layer them
and laminate them together.
(narrator)
Wei leads the team
that's developing
the multi-tasking
computer chip brain.
Different regions of the chip
control different things.
Also, an electronic nervous
system within the bee brain
tells it
to flap its wings.
(narrator)
And if the fuel source
is too heavy, the bee can't fly.
A collaborator
is making micro-fuel cells
that should be better than
the batteries we're producing.
(Wei)
There's so much
that goes into just achieving
what bees in nature
seem to do
without any effort.
(narrator)
They're hoping to build a colony
of interacting Robobees.
There will be no queen bee,
but they'll design a hive
that will work
as a refueling station.
One day, a swarm
of these micro-robots
could be deployed to search
for victims after a disaster.
While that would be years away,
Wood says the advancements
they've made so far
are already creating
quite a buzz.
For Science Nation,
I'm Miles O'Brien.
