EU's future cyber-farms to utilise drones, robots and sensors

Bee-based maths is helping teach swarms of drones to find weeds, while robotic mowers keep hedgerows in shape. 'We observe the behaviour of bees. We gain knowledge of how the bees solve problems and with this we obtain rules of interaction that can be adapted to tell us how the robot swarms should work together,' said Vito Trianni at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National Research Council. Honeybees, for example, run on an algorithm to allow them to choose the best nest site, even though no bee knows the full picture. Trianni runs an EU-funded research project known as SAGA, which is using the power of robotic groupthink to keep crops weed free.