that does everything a real honey bee does including flying, finding and collecting pollen, making honey, navigation, communicating through dancing and building honey combs.
The technology developed would obviously be a tectonic technology shift but it would also be comforting to be able to have a backup if something happened to the bees.
But mostly for the technological breakthroughs it would create.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 07 2024 Picture for articles on the subject to generate interest. https://www.dropbox...lx&st=3ke81b3m&dl=0 [doctorremulac3, Jul 07 2024] Competition logo https://www.dropbox...6c&st=lrqp4668&dl=0(C) (tm) All rights reserved [doctorremulac3, Jul 07 2024] The bees are allright https://www.nationa.../the-bees-are-fine/ [theircompetitor, Jul 10 2024] The X Prize Foundation https://www.xprize.org/ [doctorremulac3, Jul 11 2024] There's more to the bee story than just the honeybees. https://www.scienti...em-with-honey-bees/I don't read essentially political journals for their profound scientific insight, and neither should you. [RayfordSteele, Jul 14 2024] I've actually pondered this a lot. I love the idea of robot bees that could pollinate vegetable gardens without stinging anyone or attracting animals like birds who eat bees and also eat the veggies.... but COULD be programmed to sting on demand as a security system.-- 21 Quest, Jul 07 2024 Yea, that would be a pretty effective security system. The things the technology could be applied to are pretty numerous.
So you might put up a 100 million dollar prize broken into say 5 steps:
1- Flies and navigates as well as a bee. 10m.
2- Can search out pollen as well as a bee. 20m.
3- Can collect pollen and pollenate as well as a bee. 30m.
4- Can make honey as well as a bee. 40m.
Maybe you could allow for size requirements not being met but the systems all being duplicated. So it does all that but it's twice the size of a bee the X Prize award is 50 million instead of 100.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 07 2024 If it were me, I would focus on the apex predatory insect and just make dragonflies which also pollinate.
Cheaper and more effective in the long term as less units will need to be produced.Offer the public the chance to take on a dragonfly avatar with incentives to show future AI what to do and they might even pay for the opportunity.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 07 2024 I don't think so.
That's a good question.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 07 2024 I don't think that dragonflies pollinate naturally. Maybe accidentally.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 07 2024 The first idea was to call it "Operation Hornet" but who wants a bunch of robot hornets flying around so I dropped the idea. Then at a picnic yesterday, relaxing in the sun, nice breeze with the birds singing, watching all bees doing their thing with flowers it hit me. "Everybody loves bees, plus bees feed us through pollination. Make it "Operation Honey Bee", not "Operation Swarm Of Robot Stinging Machines".
Hmm, that reminds me, I think the one thing the competition would NOT specify is the stinging part. Friendly robo-bees that don't sting. Maybe with the room saved by not having a stinging mechanism you make them hum music or something.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 08 2024 Pollinating seems like the easiest bit to solve. GPS + some sophisticated video processing and some kind of central stationary brain to tell the bees where to go.
Making honey with today's tech is best done on a commercial scale with vats of whatever I suspect. How you'd duplicate that chemical process on an insect-scale I'd guess is far beyond our capacity.
Building honeycomb would have to be some kind of tricky method of 3d printing with wax, but sourcing the wax is a whole 'nother thing.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 08 2024 //making honey// Step 1: Figure out just what the hell honey IS! Step 2: What do the bees DO to pollen (& whatever other ingredients) to turn it into honey? (And the same problems for beeswax...) As I thought honey was one of the great mysteries of the universe, & no-one ACTUALLY understands it..?-- neutrinos_shadow, Jul 08 2024 They currently make flow-hives which are printed hexagons. The bees just fill them with honey because the infrastructure to do so already exists, and at the turn of a dial the hexagons shift to release the honey without having to interact with the bees.
True story.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 08 2024 Whoa, that's cool.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 08 2024 Honey is bee enzyme-processed and dehydrated plant nectar into sugar constituents. It's the enzyme production that's the hard part. Nothing to do with pollen. The pollen just goes along for the ride.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 08 2024 They carry it in their stomach right? The pollen just clings to the hairs on their legs, but they eat the plant juice and regurgitate it back at the hive right?
Pretty sure that's how it works. Imagine the amount of microscopic pumps, valves, tubes etc to do just that one job.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 08 2024 Ah, nectar not pollen. That's my bad...-- neutrinos_shadow, Jul 08 2024 The teacher of the beekeeping course I took was from South Africa and says that all North American bees are now Africanized bees after somebody noticed the "wrong" size of opening on a single African beehive in the seventies and "fixed" the problem.
Anyone else more than just a little bit tired of the fearmongering?
Y2K all computers are going to crash.Anthrax is going to kill us all.West Nile Virus is going to kill us all.Sars is going to kill us all.Bird flu is going to kill us all.Ecoli is going to kill us all.Killer bees are going to kill us allThe hole in the ozone layer is going to kill us all.The swine flu is going to kill us all.The Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world in 2012.Zika virus is going to kill us all.Murder hornets are going to kill us all.Corona virus is going to kill us all.
...
...anybody else done with this endless crock of shit?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 10 2024 ...and AIDs was going to kill us all for sure. How the fuck did I forget AIDs in that list?
What else did I forget that these fear-mongering pieces of shit have put us through?
As much as I miss happy-[2 fries], he ain't coming back until this shit has been dealt with.You will figure this shit out or it will be figured out for you. Whichever of you degenerate shits are responsible.
Mark my words.
We don't all need to take out loans for entire guillotines......just for separate guillotine parts...
..."They" will get the idea then.
Western society is about done with this DEI bullshit andyou are about to see things about-face far more quickly than was anticipated by the globalist fuckwads pushing this shit.
You'll see.
...and yet you still won't give me credit for calling it in advance.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 10 2024 That's okay.
I'm becoming quite used to it.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 10 2024 I give you credit but you forgot global warming predicted by folks who conveniently forget about a 4th generation nuclear power based almost 100% green economy (100% when you start mining and transporting with electric vehicles) and the small fact that China releases more greenhouse gasses then the next 4 biggest polluters combined yet we're the ones who have to bow to our climate overlords in their private jets.
So why don't they support 4th gen nuclear? It doesn't make anybody rich. It's so cheap and efficient that in a nuclear based society it's probably silly to even meter power for residential use. I would make it free to people with homes under 2,500 square feet and have industries pay for it all but still it wouldn't be the money maker that current generation systems are. The main cost of building nuclear power plants is getting through the bureaucracy of approval of non-standardized old designs, the very bureaucracy that just happens to make big bucks with other power sources.
Look up worst polluting countries and you get hundreds of charts showing "Worst polluters PER CAPITA." Let that sink in. So you could live in a country with 50 people, point out their "per capita pollution index number" and start controlling them like the lowly serfs they are. "AC thermostats up to 85 degrees and lights out by 6 proles!" This decree given from their private jet burning 200 gallons of fuel an hour.
Then you get the same people wanting to shut down the cheapest and greenest form of energy of all, hydroelectric that has been powering entire states for decades using pure solar power. (that's where the water comes from) So that's pretty much a wrap on what's going on here.
I support development and implementation of renewables as appropriate, but I don't trust the people in charge now at all.
Whenever you get confused following the science, follow the money instead.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 10 2024 Yep. The last Scientific American magazine had an article devoted to how Canada should be paying reparations to china because of our per capita carbon emissions.
The science is clear.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 10 2024 Oh great, and what's their percentage of THAT cash transfer? Enough I'm sure.
Re: bee link. Robo bees NOT doing that would be a major selling point.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 10 2024 Everyone please check out TC’s link. Is it all starting to be clear? The apocalypse industry is huge and we’re all paying for it.
And yes, including the old story that the bees can’t survive without global Stalinism.
I’m changing the sales bit on this and pointing out it’s to achieve breakthroughs in miniaturization, not to replace bees which are doing fine.
Thank you TC.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 10 2024 Whoa! This is that 2.0. That could be used as the MAIN sales point for this. "It's not that crazy, this isn't un-precedented".
I'd use Mr Feynman's exploits to sell this next step.
Thank you a1! Maybe this idea isn't so nutty after all.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 10 2024 //Saying you're going to BUILD a robo-bee and give some idea of how?//
And as usual a1, read the idea.
Hint: This has nothing to do with me building a robo bee.
//Just want to give some insight on how I think about these things//
I don't believe thinking has anything to do with it.
READ
THE
IDEA-- doctorremulac3, Jul 11 2024 It's an idea for an X Prize competition, the way it would be done is by funding it. Do you know what an X Prize competition is?
Maybe if I demonstrate your method of criticism you can make some adjustments:
Idea: To take a tennis ball and put a sound maker in it that makes an explosive sound when you hit it with the tennis racket. The ball is covered with a contact switch arrangement that triggers a battery powered amplifier and speaker inside with a digital recording of an explosion.
You: I don't get why you would post this. Tennis balls are widely known to exist and they already make a sound when you hit them. And how are you going to get it to make a loud sound? Tennis balls are empty and made of rubber. [-]
Hmm, that's actually kind of a cool idea. Think I'll put it up.
But back to your obsession with quashing somebody's fun, if somebody puts up an idea that you don't get, so what? You're not the guard at the gate and if are, bro, you're a very very bad guard. Remember the float in place sandbags debacle where I had to kept cutting and pasting the original idea points over and over to answer your never ending questions that had already been clearly answered till you got embarrassed and erased ALL your ideas in a mega-tantrum? This is supposed to be fun, light entertainment and you take it waaaaaaayyyyyyyy too seriously.
I don't believe I've ever done one of those annoying MFD things. Ugh. You live for them.
And keep in mind, boning and MFDing people's ideas just makes them not want to come here. These days I basically just use this place as a notebook but still hope to enjoy the occasional interesting conversation, but I don't count on it because it's a hollow shell of what it once was. Ask yourself if you're adding anything or just pissing people off. Really, this isn't a court of law, it's a fun place.
Or it was anyway.
Hey, I've got an idea. Write the X Prize foundation and tell them all their contest proposals are not ideas that are up to your standards of creativity and that they're not really doing anything. I'm sure they'll really appreciate it.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 11 2024 I think the per capita thing is largely skewed by the number of jet airplane flights in that specific nation, not any evil plot. It's a data point used by friends and fiends alike.
As to the bees, there are a... um... few more species of bee than the honey bee, so while the National Review stops where the money trail ends the science of speciation is just getting started.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 14 2024 I can't believe I left out the best part of what the robo-bee would do. It would communicate with other robo-bees with dancing.
Yes, bees communicate with dance.-- doctorremulac3, Aug 05 2024 random, halfbakery