Robot bees warning: Could drones for pollinating crops be told to attack us if they are taken over by hackers?

  • Robots are under development in US and Japan and could be ready in 10 years
  • The helicopter drones could be used to help pollinate crops instead of bees
  • But one researcher has said that the 'robobees' could be taken over by hackers  

It seems like a perfect opportunity for technology to step in and solve problems in the natural world – using tiny helicopter drones to pollinate crops as the number of bees plummets.

But amid all the buzz, could this plan for 'robot bees' have a sting in the tail?

One scientist has suggested the robobees could be taken over by hackers – and turned into killing machines.

The robots are under development in both the US and Japan, and it is hoped they could be ready for use within a decade.

One scientist has suggested the robobees could be taken over by hackers (stock image)

Under the plans, the drones would wear fuzzy 'jackets' that pollen would then stick to, allowing them to pollinate flowers.

In some parts of the US, up to 44 per cent of bees have died, meaning the robots could be needed sooner rather than later.

But at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual conference in Austin, Texas, Professor Shashi Shekhar, of the University of Minnesota, warned that security was a key concern for the technology.

He said: 'Hacking is a security issue so if the bees' own controls are hacked they can be put to a damaging purpose.'

He told the audience about a chilling episode of the Netflix series Black Mirror in which robot bees are put to 'nefarious purposes'. 

The storyline involves a rogue hacker who is able to control countless numbers of the drones to attack and kill hundreds of thousands of people.

Prof Shekhar said: 'They send the bees to attack. They use killer bees. With bees all you need is a sting and that sting can deliver a chemical.'

On a more serious note, the academic said that the projects still had issues to iron out before the robot bees could be used – including how they will manage to find their own way around.

He said the US developers – at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts – were still not using fully autonomous drones.

Under the plans, the drones would wear fuzzy 'jackets' that pollen would then stick to, allowing them to pollinate flowers

Under the plans, the drones would wear fuzzy 'jackets' that pollen would then stick to, allowing them to pollinate flowers

And, on the Japanese project, he said: 'Bees were remotely operated so there was a person actually driving it. So the person was visually seeing where the flower is and how to land it.'

According to the professor, the biggest advance in the technology is cameras that can be fitted to other drones. These can then be used to fly over a field and map where all the flowers are to within a few centimetres.

He said: 'If you made a very detailed map, then offline using these images you could create the location of the plants and the flowers. Today these technologies are mature enough that this could be done daily.

'Then all of this computing and sensing is offloaded from the bee.

'You can say to bee number-one, 'Go to these ten flowers'.'

Prof Shekhar said he thought some robotic bees would be in use within five to ten years. He added: 'Sometimes a crisis allows you to test new technology. If we did have a bee-related crisis that might prompt more early adoption.

'It's possible this is perceived as a food security issue.

'There is a food security problem being looked at in the US because of climate change.'

He said it was also possible that the Pentagon was working on the bees because 'food security' is considered a major threat to US interests. 'It's possible they are preparing this kind of technology if they think bee-colony collapse is the first-order food security risk,' he added.

 

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