An article to contribute to the important debate of human driven VS nature driven pollination.
Robotic bees for crop pollination: Why drones cannot replace biodiversity,
by Simon G. Potts, Peter Neumann, Bernard Vaissière, Nicolas J. Vereecken
Abstract:
The notion that robotic crop pollination will solve the decline in pollinators has gained wide popularity recently (Fig. 1), and in March 2018 Walmart filed a patent
for autonomous robot bees. However, w present six arguments showing that this is a technically and economically inviable ‘solution’ at present and poses substan-
tial ecological and moral risks: (1) despite recent advances, robotic pollination is far from being able to replace bees to pollinate crops efficiently; (2) using robots
is very unlikely to be economically viable; (3) there would be unacceptably high environmental costs; (4) wider ecosystems would be damaged; (5) it would
erode the values of biodiversity; and, (6) relying on robotic pollination could actually lead to major food insecurity.
Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.06.114
