Research on the movements of bee swarms, which could influence the design of robotics, drones and national defense technology, is underway in the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology at Oklahoma State University.

Dr. Imraan Faruque, associate professor in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is the principal investigator on a project called “GIGApixel iNsect Tracking to Investigate Collaboration in Swarms (GIGANTICS).”

GIGANTICS combines artificial intelligence, vast camera systems, biology and robotics to better understand how the insects in a swarm collaborate and coordinate. The team is looking to enlarge the scale of the digitization of these swarms.

Bees are viable due to a well-developed hierarchy of social interactions, developed over decades of biological research, allowing scientists to interpret in-flight behaviors and providing a large-scale digitization database of foraging trajectories. This not only allows for better monitoring of these swarms but also provides more understanding of human food security by studying a threatened species.

Swarm digitization has been limited in confined spaces, shrinking the scope of these studies. In these test scenarios, it is difficult to track individual insects indefinitely. This is due to the inability to confirm when an insect has deviated from one task to another.

This project will greatly expand the ability to digitally monitor a swarm of bees within a city block, or about 5 acres. GIGANTICS expands the number of cameras from 4-6 to approximately 75.

This will allow the team to gather detailed data on how insects interact within large-scale collectives, providing real-time information on how the swarm’s systems interact and collaborate.

“The block-scale digitization effort has three major efforts: scale up the current 4-6 camera system to 1.3 gigapixels worth of imagery, integrate multiple hives with a native pollinator garden and integrate robotic stimulus tools to provide attractors and upward,” Faruque said. “We do not currently have large-scale swarms measured. A biologist (Tom Seeley) famously led a 1990s team that quantified the largest-scale swarms to date, which at the time used VHS tape and manual digitization. GIGANTICS simultaneously expands the precision and the volume of this data.”

Testing will take place north of the OSU-Stillwater campus at the Pocket Prairie site near McElroy Road. OSU Facilities and Landscape Management were instrumental in the site setup, including developing the native pollinator garden where the bees congregate and are tracked.

The site is equipped with robotic lawnmowing, which reduces landscape manpower and creates new ways to stimulate the site. The team chose all-wheel-drive robotic platforms with an application programming interface that can be automated to integrate attractors and repulsors onto the robots.

“Because the tracking system has visibility into flying targets, the ability to insert flying drones and their tools into the environment opens up powerful future opportunities to use the system to study how robots replicate these functions, comparing traditional robotic approaches with the new bio-inspired approaches we’ve developed,” Faruque said.

This project has allowed students to develop hands-on experience in computer science through enterprise-level studies, as well as real-time tracking, data analysis and care for biological systems.

"Most importantly, they get to experience a translational path showing how these small organisms contribute vital information to science that leads to public societal good as well as new engineered products,” Faruque said. “The unique experiences they develop through their work on this path enable them to dream big and accomplish those goals.”

By studying honeybee flights in six hives, this methodology is applicable in systematic studies of how aerial and underwater collaborations respond to different scenarios. Being located near the Oklahoma Aerospace Institute for Research and Education allows the site to be a campus test range for diverse coordinated flight operations without additional maintenance.

Successfully tracking honey bees in this way opens the door to potential uses in other applications of collaboration monitoring. This research demonstrates the ability to gather unprecedented data on how honeybees collaborate and respond to their environment, helping researchers better understand pollinator behavior and health.

It will also create opportunities for testing coordinated drone operations near OAIRE, providing a chance for student-led robotics research. GIGANTICS has great potential to influence areas such as agriculture and conservation.

Through collaboration, curiosity and a commitment to public good, the GIGANTICS team is demonstrating how cutting-edge research puts OSU at the forefront of tackling a difficult challenge and crafting a solution.