Robotics Business Review has partnered with Abishur Prakash at Center for Innovating the Future to provide its readers with cutting-edge insights into recent developments in international robotics, AI, and unmanned systems. Are you ready to be updated?
Robots could help address food insecurity
Robotics development: Scientists at the Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU), a university in Russia, are among the teams developing robotic bees, or “robobees,” that can pollinate plants as effectively as real bees.
TPU plans to produce 100 of these robobees at a cost of $1.4 million and to test them in 2019. For now, the robobees will only be used in enclosed spaces, such as for strawberry plants. The university said it expects such robots to be tireless.
Geopolitical significance: Food security has always been a complex geopolitical challenge for countries. Lack of food can lead to social unrest, economic recession and even war — just take a look at what’s happening in Venezuela.
To solve world problems such as “food insecurity,” all kinds of robots are emerging. The robobee from Russia isn’t the first of its kind. Last year, a group of researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology unveiled drones that can pollinate plants.
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