In a moment of serene curiosity, you lean forward, taking a whiff of the aroma of an English lavender shrub. Suddenly, a bzz emerges from your left periphery, accompanied by its subtle vibration. Your eyes shift, and there it is—a bee, or so it seems. But upon closer examination, a revelation dawns upon you—it's not a bee at all; it's something far more intriguing: an Autonomous Drone Insect (ADI).
Remember the chilling portrayal in "Hated in the Nation" from TV series Black Mirror? In this cautionary tale, the world grapples with the aftermath of Colony Collapse Disorder, leading to the extinction of real bees. Enter ADIs, synthetic bees designed to save a fragile food system. Sounds like a brilliant solution, doesn't it? A glimpse of a utopian future, perhaps. Yet, the plot takes an unsettling turn, unveiling a dystopian reality. These very ADIs, while restoring the ecosystem, become agents of a daily murder spree, targeting individuals marked by the "DeathTo" social media hashtag. Black Mirror's narrative, though fictional, resonates with a profound truth–the unanticipated repercussions of seemingly harmless innovations. Now, as the world confronts the undeniable challenges of global climate change, we face a similar dilemma.
Harnessing the agility of insects, which continue to navigate their surroundings despite injury, has long inspired robotics research. While rigid actuators (mechanical components that produce precise, controlled motion, converting energy into movement) have demonstrated exceptional mobility and manipulation capabilities, they falter in comparison to the resilience exhibited by living organisms when handling unexpected damage. This disparity has prompted the emergence of ‘Dielectric Elastomer Actuators’ (DEAs), a category of soft transducers. Soft transducers are flexible devices that also convert energy, similar to rigid actuators, but can undergo deformation without losing functionality. These DEAs function akin to muscles, endowing robots with a newfound elegance in their movements across air, land, and underwater—mirroring the capabilities of their rigid actuator counterparts (Kim et al., 2023).
Yet, unlike real muscles, DEAs can suffer from local defects that cause the whole device to stop working properly, limiting their performance, size, and lifespan. To address this, on March 15, 2023, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology created DEAs that can endure over 100 punctures while still maintaining their high speed and power, essential for energy-demanding tasks like flying (Kim et al., 2023).
To understand and fix the defects, scientists used electroluminescent DEAs that light up where electrical connectivity is maintained, making it useful for visual feedback. For minor injuries, the damaged electrode is isolated, or ‘self-cleared.’ For more severe breakdowns, leading to failure, they developed a laser-assisted method to identify and isolate the primary defects and restore the actuator's performance (Kim et al., 2023). The result is an aerial robot that can endure critical damage to its actuators and wings while still maintaining its ability to hover accurately.
This discovery builds on the work of researchers from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. They introduced a breakthrough in the development of these ‘RoboBees’ involving artificial muscles that exhibit remarkable stretch and impact endurance (Chen et al., 2019). These artificial muscles possess the capacity for flight control, enabling the construction of compact aerial robots incorporating DEAs. They are flexible, powerful, and biomimetic (imitating characteristics of living organisms), and they weigh only 100 milligrams each (Chen et al., 2019). DEAs empower these robots with sufficient power density and bandwidth, allowing them to achieve stable and controlled flight, even in confined spaces (Chen et al., 2019). To control their flight, the robots rely on external systems that provide power and motion control. The advancements occurring through these studies and others underscore the potential for soft robotic systems to emulate the agility and resilience of living creatures. In other words, robots are getting closer to moving and adapting like animals.
As our reality becomes increasingly intertwined with advanced technologies, the lines between progress and peril blur. The eerie echoes of "Hated in the Nation" remind us that while ADI bees could hold the promise of ecological salvation, especially as we face a global decline in the diversity of actual bee species (Zattara & Aizen, 2021), they also present a potential means for ulterior motives, perhaps even in the realm of warfare or surveillance. Just as ADIs were co-opted in the episode to perpetrate a grim form of ‘justice,’ we must consider the ethical complexities of such technology.
This leads us to reconsider the question that has become so emblematic both of the 21st century and the Black Mirror series: has technology gone too far? The evolution of ‘RoboBees’ signifies the remarkable potential of technology, but we must tread carefully, ensuring that we strike a balance between innovation and preservation. It is our responsibility to safeguard the biodiversity and ecological systems that have evolved over millions of years. We should cherish the indispensable contributions of natural pollinators to our existence and nurture the delicate equilibrium that sustains us.
References
Chen, Y., Zhao, H., Mao, J. et al. (2019). Controlled flight of a microrobot powered by soft artificial muscles. Nature 575, 324–329. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1737-7.
Kim, S., Hsiao, Y. H., Lee, Y., Zhu, W., Ren, Z., Niroui, F., & Chen, Y. (2023). Laser-assisted failure recovery for dielectric elastomer actuators in aerial robots. Science robotics, 8(76). https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.adf4278.
Zattara, E. E., & Aizen, M. A. (2021). Worldwide occurrence records suggest a global decline in bee species richness. One Earth, 4(1), 114-123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.12.005.