DEXTER

DEXTER

Nathan Myhrvold was Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer until 1999. By the time he left Microsoft, he could afford to do whatever he wanted. He chose the life of a wealthy virtuous hacker. Sort of an aging Dexter. Yes, I am jealous.

Watch the following TED presentation then read the rest of the post.

The video demonstrates a mosquito zapper made out of CD player lasers and hacked components bought off of eBay. I don’t want to zap anything but I am interested in the low cost tracking of flying insects. My question is this: could this technology be used to track or identify bees? It’s just a different wing beat frequency. A $50 LIDAR tracker could tell me the following:

  • Where my bees have been? Who is pouring insecticide on their flower garden?
  • What plants and trees are accounting for the nectar flow? My sourwood and tulip poplar trees are all 30+ feet high. BTW, I’ve learned that simply inspecting pollen does not tell you where a nectar is coming from. There are pollen sources that do not produce meaningful nectar and visa versa.

So this is hardly a new idea. Sandia National Laboratories published a report in 2003 showing that tracking of bees using a laser ranging device was feasible. You paid for this report so read it now by clicking here.

So why is DARPA and Sandia Labs tracking bees? Because you can train bees to recognize high explosive in just a few hours and then they will fly over buried land mines and swarm above them. Find the swarm and you find the land mine. And without blowing up Fido. Sandia Labs has graciously given me permission to reproduce this great photo of bees working in concert with the Department of Homeland Security.

Mind Sniffing Bees

Mine Sniffing Bees

Click the image for a larger view.

While we’re on the topic of bomb sniffing bees, there is a company in the UK that specializes in just this thing. Check it out at Inscentinel.com.

So are there any engineers or EO experts out there willing to try to build a cheap bee tracker? We know it can be done. But can it be done at home for under $100?