These Tiny Radar Chips and Drones Are Tracking Bees

Are you using radar chips for your small designs? Here’s one for the books—and maybe some ideas for your designs, too.

A research team at the University of Oxford wanted to help insect and bird populations that are at risk. They came up with a new Biotracks technology that tracks harmonic radar tags attached to bees with a receiver carried on a drone.

The tags are attached in between the bee’s wings “like a rucksack” to track their movements.

This research is vital on a few levels. More than 85% of plants are insect-pollinated, yet 40% of these insects are at risk of extinction. Without pollinators and pollination, the plants set fewer (or possibly no) seeds, which means no reproduction of those plants for the next generations.

The system works with a radar transmitter sitting on the ground, a small tag attached to the back of the bee, and a receiver on a drone flying above. To facilitate this, the team invented the smallest harmonic radar tag ever so the weight wouldn’t affect the insect’s behavior. The team also addressed the weight limit and loadout types the drone could safely carry.

To track the bees, LED lights around the camera reflect off the tag on the bee and backward to the camera, while a small circuit attached to the radar system converts the signals into a higher frequency, which is picked up by a very sensitive receiver.

“It illuminates the bee, then pings back a higher frequency signal, which we can locate with another radio receiver,” said Associate Prof of Engineering Science Chris Stevens.

Prof Stevens described tracking small insects with radar as an “engineer’s extreme sport.”