This Drone Has Artificial Intelligence Modelled on Honey Bee Brains

VICE

Launched in 2012, the Green​ Brain Project aims to create the first accurate computer model of a honey bee brain, and transplant that onto a UAV.

The project, based out of the University of Sheffield and University of Sussex, seeks to raise awareness of the declining population of honey bees worldwide, as well as to advance our knowledge of AI and honey bee cognition.

While bees have 960,000 neurons, compared to the 100 millions neurons in a human brain, scientists have ​discovered that a honey bee’s brain is in fact impressively responsive and adaptive.

Researchers from the Green Brain Project—which recalls IBM’s Blue Brai​n Project to build a virtual human brain—hope that a UAV equipped with elements of a honey bee’s super-sight and smell will have applications in everything from disaster zone search and rescue missions to agriculture.

“Bees have tremendous navigation abilities, and are able to learn and follow routes up to around seven miles,”said James Marshall, a professor of theoretical and computational biology who is heading up the project.

So how close are we to having our first bee brain-powered UAV? Marshall said that the team had made significant progress since 2012 and are now at the stage where they’re running bee brain simulations on their own bespoke quadcopter platform. “We are able to mount a variety of sensors on this quadcopter to mimic the sensory ability of the honey bee,” he said in an email.

The team is replicating the honey bee’s wide field of vision with two fish-eye cameras, and mounting chemosensors, which act like “electronic noses” that detect odorants with particular chemical profiles.

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