Türkiye’s Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara has received an award for developing “robot bees” that can feed their real counterparts, which are under the threat of extinction worldwide, and a system that allows hives to be monitored with artificial intelligence.
Director of the Center for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence at METU, Erol Sahin, said the project was initiated 2 years ago by an international consortium including British, Austrian and Czech scientists. A research and development team consists of 20 people.
According to Sahin, if bees were to disappear, the entire ecosystem would face the threat of collapse, Anadolu reported.
"As part of the project, we have developed an AI-based system that can monitor the inside of a hive on a 24/7 basis. This allows us to monitor the health of the bees inside the hive, including the queen bee. In addition, we have developed the first prototype of micro-robot bees that mimic worker bees and can externally feed and control the queen bee. With these micro-robot bees, we have succeeded in feeding the queen bee," Sahin said.
