Secret Math of Fly Eyes Could Overhaul Robot Vision

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/fly-eyes/

USDA scientists breed a variety of bees that can detect the Varro mite, which is thought to contribute to colony collapse disorder:

http://news.discovery.com/animals/honeybee-mite-sniffers-colony.html

RoboBees Team Member L. Mahadevan wins MacArthur Fellowship

RoboBees co-PI L. Mahadevan has won a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, the co-called "genius grant" that provides $500,000 of support over the next five years. Maha's research involves using mathematics to understand the behavior of living and nonliving matter, particularly at the scale of the everyday world and is thus closely tied in with experience and experiments. His research tries to uncover explanations of robust everyday phenomena that are easy to observe, often not so well understood, and are of relevance far beyond what might be first envisaged.

Congrats to Maha!

Postdoc openings on the RoboBees project

The Harvard RoboBees project (http://robobees.seas.harvard.edu) is funded through an NSF Expeditions in Computing grant and is developing an artificial colony of robotic bees. This project involves a wide range of research themes in microscale robotics, multi-agent systems, embedded computing, and novel programming models. The RoboBees project has openings for postdoctoral researchers with expertise in the following areas:

• Wireless sensor networks
• Embedded computing
• Biologically-inspired multiagent systems
• Swarm robotics
• Low-power wireless networking

To apply, please send your CV and a brief research statement to Prof. Matt Welsh with the subject line RoboBees Postdoc Application. Before applying for this position, please read over the synopsis of the RoboBees project on our website, and indicate in your application how your research interests overlap with the specific themes above. The application deadline is October 15, 2009. We hope to make decisions by early November.

RoboBees featured on NECN

NECN did a good segment on the RoboBees project on August 19. Watch the video here.

Welcome to the RoboBees project

This is the official blog of the Harvard RoboBees project. We're developing an autonomous colony of robotic bees that can be used for crop pollination, search and rescue, environmental monitoring, and more. This project is funded by a $10M NSF Expeditions in Computing grant and involves 10 researchers from Harvard and Northeastern Universities, with expertise ranging from microrobotics, programming languages, wireless networking, and low-power computer architecture.

This blog will be used as an informal forum for disseminating research results, discussing relevant projects and papers, and raising different points of view.

For more details on the RoboBees project, check out the official project web site.