Robot bees? Walmart has applied for a patent on artificial pollinators

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      Remember that Black Mirror episode with the robot bees, or Autonomous Drone Insects (ADIs), as they were called on the show? The idea was that the miniature drones would become pollinators in place of actual bees, whose numbers were dwindling due to colony collapse disorder. If you haven't seen the episode or just don't remember it, here's a quick refresher:

      In real life, scientists have been working on robotic drone pollinators for years, with perhaps the most notable effort to date being the one supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, as published in the journal Chem last year.

      And now the world's largest company seems to be getting into the robot-bee business. As Newsweek, Fortune, and others have reported today, U.S.-based retail giant Walmart has applied for a number of patents over the past year related to farm automation. These include technologies that would monitor crop health, spray pesticides, and scare off birds. The most recent of these, published on March 8, is an application for a patent on "Systems and Methods for Pollinating Crops Via Unmanned Vehicles". (You can see the full publication here.)

      So, yes, it seems we are one major step closer to the age of the robo-bee. What is possibly a more interesting aspect of the story is that all of these patents suggest that Walmart, which already generates more than half of its revenue through grocery sales, is looking to vertically integrate its food supply chain, which would make it not just a retail colossus, but a farming one as well. For some, this notion might be even scarier than any Black Mirror episode.

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