Robots-Blog | Festo at Hannover Fair unveils Bionic Honeybees that fly in swarms

For greater than 15 years, the Bionic Learning Network has been specializing in the fascination of flying. In addition to the technical decoding of chicken flight, the workforce has researched and technologically carried out quite a few different flying objects and their pure rules. With the BionicBee, the Bionic Learning Network has now for the primary time developed a flying object that may fly in giant numbers and fully autonomously in a swarm. The BionicBee will current its first flight present on the Hannover Messe 2024.

At round 34 grams, a size of 220 millimetres and a wingspan of 240 millimetres, the BionicBee is the smallest flying object created by the Bionic Learning Network to this point. For the primary time, the builders used the strategy of generative design: after coming into just some parameters, a software program software makes use of outlined design rules to search out the optimum construction to make use of as little materials as mandatory whereas sustaining essentially the most secure development doable. This constant light-weight development is crucial for good manoeuvrability and flying time.

Autonomous flying in a swarm

The autonomous habits of the bee swarm is achieved with the assistance of an indoor finding system with ultra-wideband (UWB) expertise. For this function, eight UWB anchors are put in within the area on two ranges. This permits an correct time measurement and permits the bees to find themselves within the area. The UWB anchors ship alerts to the person bees, which might independently measure the distances to the respective transmitting parts and calculate their very own place within the area utilizing the time stamps.

To fly in a swarm, the bees comply with the paths specified by a central pc. To guarantee secure and collision-free flight in shut formation, a excessive diploma of spatial and temporal accuracy is required. When planning the trail, the doable mutual interplay by way of air turbulence “downwash” should even be taken into consideration.

As each bee is handmade and even the smallest manufacturing variations can affect its flight habits, the bees moreover have an automated calibration operate: After a brief check fl ight, every bee determines its individually optimized controller parameters. The clever algorithm can thus calculate the {hardware} variations between the person bees, permitting all the swarm to be managed from exterior, as if all bees had been similar.