Periodic Reporting for period 3 - RoboRoyale (ROBOtic Replicants for Optimizing the Yield by Augmenting Living Ecosystems)
Reporting period: 2024-03-01 to 2025-06-30
Earth's ecosystems are rapidly losing species diversity and abundance, particularly affecting insects, critical for pollination and ecosystem stability. The Western honeybee, a key pollinator, sustains a significant portion of the human diet and holds considerable economic importance. RoboRoyale is developing robotic and biological technologies to support the well-being of the honeybee queen, responsible for colony reproduction and efficiency. We aim for a minimally invasive approach that can regulate and enhance egg-laying by supplementing the queen’s court with a robotic system. The bio-hybrid system will serve as a tool to study honeybee biology, support colony health, and provide stability to the surrounding ecosystem. Demonstrating that the robotic system can affect a single organism and influence wider ecological processes offers new insights and could lead to scientific and biotechnological approaches to create symbiotic super-organisms of robots and animals.
During this period we reached a point where our robotic system could work safely together with real honeybee colonies for long durations. This allowed us to observe the behaviour of honeybee queens continuously for more than a year and to start testing gentle, direct interaction inside the hive. We have shown that small robotic elements can support feeding, monitoring, and imaging. Our results now confirm that advanced sensing and small robotic tools can cooperate with living colonies in a way that preserves natural behaviour.
The main objectives of the project are:
-To investigate how to improve the efficiency, welfare, reproductive rate, and health of a honeybee colony by regulating the behavioUrs of its queen.
-Developing bee-sized, bio-compatible robots capable of fostering successful colony-sustaining interactions with honeybee queens, a vital and highly sensitive animal that requires constant care.
-To raise awareness among public and industrial stakeholders about the potential of high-tech to transform outdated low-tech agriculture and livestock management practices, thus fostering a sustainable service industry rooted in bio-hybrid technology.
During this period we reached a point where our robotic system could work safely together with real honeybee colonies for long durations. This allowed us to observe the behaviour of honeybee queens continuously for more than a year and to start testing gentle, direct interaction inside the hive. We have shown that small robotic elements can support feeding, monitoring, and imaging. Our results now confirm that advanced sensing and small robotic tools can cooperate with living colonies in a way that preserves natural behaviour.
The main objectives of the project are:
-To investigate how to improve the efficiency, welfare, reproductive rate, and health of a honeybee colony by regulating the behavioUrs of its queen.
-Developing bee-sized, bio-compatible robots capable of fostering successful colony-sustaining interactions with honeybee queens, a vital and highly sensitive animal that requires constant care.
-To raise awareness among public and industrial stakeholders about the potential of high-tech to transform outdated low-tech agriculture and livestock management practices, thus fostering a sustainable service industry rooted in bio-hybrid technology.
We developed the main actuator and the queen visual tracking system, tested them successfully, and integrated tracking with the actuator to collect extensive queen-trajectory data over several months. We also developed a system to test the biocompatibility of materials for biological acceptability in the hive. We developed a model that describes the behavior of the queen, her court, and the interactions between them and gained new insights into the biology of this species. We developed a prototype end-effector, which is a multi-agent system manipulating interactive agents in relation to the queen, and evaluated its motion control performance through numerical simulation. However, deployment of the multi-arm manipulator in real hives was not continued after PR2 following the reviewers’ comments. Building on insights from the previous project periods, the consortium has planned a clear path on how to proceed in future project periods.
The robotic observation platform now operates continuously and has produced a very large long-term dataset on queen and colony behaviour. We introduced the elastic separation concept and later refined it with improved mechanical solutions, which enabled safe deployment of sensing and feeding elements inside the hive. Continuous operation has generated new biological insight, including detailed models of queen behaviour and worker–queen interaction under realistic conditions.
We also integrated the pollen trap and feeding mechanism with the mobile observation system, and began testing controlled feeding of the queen.
The consortium organised several technical workshops, a summer school and public demonstrations, and the work has resulted in conference papers, a cover publication in Science Robotics, and increased visibility through outreach activities.
The robotic observation platform now operates continuously and has produced a very large long-term dataset on queen and colony behaviour. We introduced the elastic separation concept and later refined it with improved mechanical solutions, which enabled safe deployment of sensing and feeding elements inside the hive. Continuous operation has generated new biological insight, including detailed models of queen behaviour and worker–queen interaction under realistic conditions.
We also integrated the pollen trap and feeding mechanism with the mobile observation system, and began testing controlled feeding of the queen.
The consortium organised several technical workshops, a summer school and public demonstrations, and the work has resulted in conference papers, a cover publication in Science Robotics, and increased visibility through outreach activities.
Scientific and technological contributions to the foundation of a new future technology:
RoboRoyale provides an autonomous robotic system that works in conjunction with highly complex social insects, honeybees. This system creates a bio-hybrid entity while also contributing to the surrounding environment (i.e. the ecosystem in which the bio-hybrid entity is placed) such as through pollination. This innovative approach represents a significant achievement and will inspire new methods and symbiotic applications.
-RoboRoyale has already enabled continuous monitoring of honeybee queens and their courts over more than a year, generating a very large long-term dataset that includes billions of images of queen and court behaviour together with repeated comb snapshots describing colony state. These data are now being used to analyse queen behaviour and colony dynamics at a spatial and temporal resolution that was not previously possible.
-This technology will enable new scientific insights into fundamental biological processes that would not be possible without it.
-Using these behavioural data as indicators of colony and environmental conditions may offer a way to approximate wider ecosystem health in the surroundings of the bio-hybrid system.
Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation:
-RoboRoyale introduced an advanced observation hive that enables continuous, high-resolution monitoring and direct interaction with the queen and her court under natural colony conditions. The resulting AROBA observation platform has been deployed in four hives for uninterrupted long-term studies and featured on the cover of Science Robotics, helping to position it as a reference system for pollinator research and precision apiculture.
-The localisation methods used in RoboRoyale enable accurate position estimation inside the hive and have also been transferred to an external real-time localisation demonstrator for public transport operators. This demonstrator, based on subsequent work by partners, was tested in a tram-following prototype, showing potential applications beyond apiculture.
-The concept of the multi-agent end-effector also has relevance for future multi-arm systems in minimally invasive surgery, where coordinated tools operate through a single entry point. In RoboRoyale this was not tested inside real colonies due to the constraints of the separation unit, yet the theoretical work on multi-agent motion planning and coordinated manipulation was completed and can be transferred to other contexts.
Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by the involvement of key actors:
-RoboRoyale brings together robotics, biology, ecology, and materials research in one programme that builds shared biohybrid platforms, such as the AROBA system, and makes them available through joint experiments, technical meetings, and public-facing activities.
-The integration of long-term biological observations with sensing and control methods is strengthening collaboration across technical and natural sciences and is expected to support future work in ecology, agriculture, and biohybrid technologies.
-RoboRoyale supports early-career researchers through thesis projects, visits, mentoring, and training activities. The Biohybrid Swarm Systems summer school and the collaboration with GRG19 in Vienna provided hands-on experience with AROBA and helped broaden participation, including strong involvement of women in robotics and related fields.
RoboRoyale provides an autonomous robotic system that works in conjunction with highly complex social insects, honeybees. This system creates a bio-hybrid entity while also contributing to the surrounding environment (i.e. the ecosystem in which the bio-hybrid entity is placed) such as through pollination. This innovative approach represents a significant achievement and will inspire new methods and symbiotic applications.
-RoboRoyale has already enabled continuous monitoring of honeybee queens and their courts over more than a year, generating a very large long-term dataset that includes billions of images of queen and court behaviour together with repeated comb snapshots describing colony state. These data are now being used to analyse queen behaviour and colony dynamics at a spatial and temporal resolution that was not previously possible.
-This technology will enable new scientific insights into fundamental biological processes that would not be possible without it.
-Using these behavioural data as indicators of colony and environmental conditions may offer a way to approximate wider ecosystem health in the surroundings of the bio-hybrid system.
Potential for future social or economic impact or market creation:
-RoboRoyale introduced an advanced observation hive that enables continuous, high-resolution monitoring and direct interaction with the queen and her court under natural colony conditions. The resulting AROBA observation platform has been deployed in four hives for uninterrupted long-term studies and featured on the cover of Science Robotics, helping to position it as a reference system for pollinator research and precision apiculture.
-The localisation methods used in RoboRoyale enable accurate position estimation inside the hive and have also been transferred to an external real-time localisation demonstrator for public transport operators. This demonstrator, based on subsequent work by partners, was tested in a tram-following prototype, showing potential applications beyond apiculture.
-The concept of the multi-agent end-effector also has relevance for future multi-arm systems in minimally invasive surgery, where coordinated tools operate through a single entry point. In RoboRoyale this was not tested inside real colonies due to the constraints of the separation unit, yet the theoretical work on multi-agent motion planning and coordinated manipulation was completed and can be transferred to other contexts.
Building leading research and innovation capacity across Europe by the involvement of key actors:
-RoboRoyale brings together robotics, biology, ecology, and materials research in one programme that builds shared biohybrid platforms, such as the AROBA system, and makes them available through joint experiments, technical meetings, and public-facing activities.
-The integration of long-term biological observations with sensing and control methods is strengthening collaboration across technical and natural sciences and is expected to support future work in ecology, agriculture, and biohybrid technologies.
-RoboRoyale supports early-career researchers through thesis projects, visits, mentoring, and training activities. The Biohybrid Swarm Systems summer school and the collaboration with GRG19 in Vienna provided hands-on experience with AROBA and helped broaden participation, including strong involvement of women in robotics and related fields.