Scientists build drone to follow and film bees
A team at the University of Freiburg has built a drone capable of following and filming bees over a distance of more than 100 metres.
The data is intended to provide information about the behaviour of insects in their national surroundings. The researchers developed a new tracking technology for this purpose.
Scientists’ understanding of how insects behave in their natural surroundings is very limited. This is due, among other things, to technological difficulties attempting to follow and record the movements of bees, for example.
A research team at the University of Freiburg led by neurobiologist and behavioural biologist Professor Dr Andrew Straw has now developed a new technology for this purpose: Fast lock-on (FLO) tracking makes it possible, for example, for a drone to follow a bee and record high-speed videos of it.
Straw says: “Anyone who has ever tried to observe what a bee does after leaving a flower knows what a challenging task this is.”
The scientists describe their new developments in the journal Science Robotics.
In FLO tracking, an image sensor homes in on a retroreflecting marker fixed to an insect. With paraxial infrared illumination, a simple image processing system can localize the insect in just a few milliseconds.
The versatile FLO technology can be used effectively in combination with other components: With a FLO system on a quadcopter drone, the scientists have already succeeded in following a flying honeybee in the wild for minutes over a distance of more than 100 metres, charting its trajectory, and taking high-resolution, slow-motion videos of its behaviour.
Main image: A landing bumblebee (Bombus terrestris), photographed with Fast Lock-On tracking. The reflector used to track the bee can be seen on its back. Photo credit: Straw Lab, University of Freiburg.