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System design for inferring colony-level pollination activity through miniature bee-mounted sensors
Haron M Abdel-Raziq1, Daniel M Palmer2, Phoebe A Koenig2,3
1Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14850, USA. hma49@cornell.edu.
Scientific Reports
|February 20, 2021
Summary
Honey bees equipped with miniature flight recorders can monitor orchard pollination activity, offering a cost-effective alternative to robots. This digital agriculture approach enhances crop yield estimates and resource management for growers.
Area of Science:
- Digital Agriculture
- Robotics
- Entomology
Background:
- Large-scale data acquisition in agriculture improves farm management.
- Autonomous robot deployment in complex environments is challenging and expensive.
- Honey bees are crucial for pollination and are already present in orchards.
Purpose of the Study:
- To present methods for using honey bees as bio-sensors for monitoring orchard pollination.
- To assess the feasibility of using miniature flight recorders on honey bees.
- To compare honey bee data acquisition with engineered systems.
Main Methods:
- Characterizing Angle-Sensitive Pixels (ASPs) for miniature flight recorders.
- Calculating memory and resolution trade-offs for ASPs.
- Integrating ASP data into a colony foraging simulator.
- Applying robotic mapping techniques to analyze flight data.
Main Results:
- Honey bee flight tracking provides valuable data for estimating crop pollination.
- The system's accuracy improves with a larger number of recorded flights.
- Angle-Sensitive Pixels show potential for miniaturized agricultural monitoring.
Conclusions:
- Honey bees equipped with flight recorders offer a promising, cost-effective method for agricultural monitoring.
- This approach leverages the natural capabilities of social insects for data acquisition.
- The system provides data comparable to explicitly engineered monitoring solutions.
