Only Slate Plus members can gift Slate stories. Become a member to share 10 free articles a month. More than a decade ago, engineers John Bartholdi, Craig Tovey, and John Vande Vate became interested ...

From searching disaster zones and responding to chemical spills to monitoring fragile ecosystems, future robot swarms may have to act in places where direct human control is difficult or dangerous. To ...

Scientists in Korea have proposed to use an algorithm that simulates the behavior of foraging bees to shape a new grid-forming inverter design. The approach is designed for both grid-connected and ...

Bees need all the help they can get. Thus programmer Mat Kelsey created a bee counter to see just how many of his winged honeymakers are hanging out in his hives. His system, which uses a Raspberry Pi ...

In an earlier story, I wrote about how bees were searching for nectar. After finding some food, a bee returns to its hive and performs a 'waggle dance' to share its discovery with the group. Now ...