RoboRoyale, an international research firm, is developing robotic bees for supporting queen bees and maintaining the hive amid declining global bee populations.

In a bid to improve bee populations, which are essential for pollination, the company is combining micro-robotics, machine learning and biological technologies to develop so-called court bees that perform hive tasks including feeding, cleaning and pheromone production for the queen.

Source: RoboRoyale

As such, the team is currently devising methods to enable the robotic bees to perform the functions of court bees by teaching them to groom the queen bee via behavior modeling, machine learning and advanced control techniques so as to regulate the egg-laying and pheromone production of the queen bee.

"Through a combination of machine learning, behavioral modeling, and advanced control methods, our system will gradually learn how to groom the queen in order to regulate her egg-laying activity and pheromone production to optimize the hive's macroscopic variables (e.g., brood production) in a scientifically and ecologically informed way," the researchers explained.

So far, the RoboRoyale robotic bee project is in the early stages of development. The firm intends to place eight robotic bees in a glass-encased hive for observation.