Honeybees and RATs on Mars

Honeybees, the most studied insect on earth, are making their mark on Mars. NASA has sent built two robot geologists — Spirit and Opportunity — built by Honeybee Robotics to explore the surface of the red planet. Mind you, a RAT has gone with them, although the RAT is a nothing fiercer than a Rock Abrasion Tool.

The name of Honeybee Robotics, a New York-based company, is probably a reference to the inspiration that insect visual systems are giving to robotics.

Other companies such as Centeye are also improving robotic vision through biological influences:

“Relying on circuits and algorithms based upon insect visual systems, Barrows’ [CEO of Centeye] imaging chips fundamentally mimic an intelligent retina by partially ‘digesting’ the image before sending the data to a backend processor. Conventional vision systems are, by contrast, heavy data crunchers, needing to process megabytes of dumb data using power-hungry processors before extracting relevant information.”

Wired gives a useful overview of bug inspirations.