Harvard Develops Robotic Bees

now.msn.com...

Are the days of the killer robot insects upon us? Well, hopefully not yet -- but we might be a step closer, thanks to the work of a team of scientists at the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory and their "monolithic bee." Hexagonal metal disks a bit smaller than a quarter house the "bees," which pop up and out of the sheet, more or less like a pop-up book, complete with actual wings. (The researchers report being inspired by origami folding techniques.) Meant to fly as part of a larger swarm, each bee body could potentially be outfitted with "chips all over that. I can build in sensors and control actuators," Professor Robert Wood told The Daily Mail. Presumably he meant to add "for the good of all mankind" rather than "sort of like in every movie you've ever seen about technology that eventually destroys mankind."

This is so cool, I cannot begin to imagine the implications in the weapons field. Spying, assassinations you name it. It gives true meaning to the saying 'fly on the wall'

good work professional i shared with my facebook network
definitely an amazing leap in technology... or at least the technology they tell us about

i wonder if people will be able to buy them and produce their own honey?

I was wondering when they were going to perfect this design, I guess sooner then I thought.

If any of you have read the novel 'Deception Point' by Dan brown their are robotic insects that are used as spies, this looks like the wave of the future, no need to use people to plant bugs. This is good because now we citizens could even monitor rogue people ourselves as this technology trickles down.

This is amazing, thanks for sharing.

I found this video which was posted in 2009. You can see the bee in motion at 1:20 mark. Also the guy in the video mentions that they've had this tech since 2007. He mentions that the bee still relied on outside power source, I wonder if they developed a battery pack small enough yet.

reply to post by JustBreathe11


that's interesting video.

This has been a creation in my mind since childhood, shame I never had the resources to create it!

At about 54 seconds he starts to say advantages, but says advances. hmmmmm.