Communications of the ACM
Drone With Bubble Machine Can Pollinate Flowers Like a Bee
Researchers at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have developed pollen-infused soap bubbles blown out of a bubble maker mounted to a drone.
Credit: iScience
Researchers at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have developed a method of pollinating flowers using an aerial drone that emits pollen-infused soap bubbles.
With 4 mg of pollen per mL of 0.4% surfactant solution, the drones were able to create soap bubbles that each carry up to 2,000 individual grains of pollen.
The researchers demonstrated their pollination approach is scalable by equipping a drone with a bubble machine that can generate 5,000 bubbles per minute, which achieved a 90% success rate when the drone flew over flowers at two meters per second at a height of two meters.
The researchers found that it took just one bubble landing on the pistil of a flower to result in pollination.
From IEEE Spectrum
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Abstracts Copyright © 2020 SmithBucklin, Washington, DC, USA
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