The RoboBee Can Now Swim

July 2024 – I am writing this so future humans will know our downfall. The first RoboBees were harmless. These tiny robotic bugs used to flit around with reckless abandon, spreading joy to the last of mankind. Researchers Yufeng Chen, E. Farrell Helbling, Nick Gravish, Kevin Ma, and Robert J. Wood from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University created these bugs to create biomimics. They were harmless. Then they learned to swim.

Because the RoboBee is so small it could not originally carry a battery and was thus tethered to the ground. Once the bees got smarter, however, they learned to carry batteries the way worker bees carry pollen. The results were devastating.

Today we bow down before the Grand Bee as she slowly ingests our offspring for chemical nutrients. But, once, a long time ago we were not afraid of the RoboBees and their aquatic ways. That is until hey learned to swim in our blood. Thanks to these monsters at Harvard the RoboBees truly gained mastery over the air and the sea.

It’s too late for us. But please, if you’re reading this, don’t pretend for an instant that a robot that can swim won’t enter your ear and burrow into your aortae. We’ve lost too many good men, women, and children to these sky demons and there is no escape. I hear them coming. Goodbye.

via Gizmodo via Spectrum