The robot who wanted to be a pollinator

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Submitted by Tessa DUNLOP on

The robot who wanted to be a pollinator

Pollinator robot
Ever wondered how to engage citizens on the problem of pollinators decline? Check out the STING project initiative that uses a robot to help citizens get more closely connected with pollinators.

Within the remit of the STING project (Science and Technology for Pollinating Insects), in partnership with DG ENV, our Italian expert had the idea to prototype a robot that would observe pollinators in their act of pollinating flowers, allow citizens to see what it sees, and invite citizens to feed itself with their very observations about the same process (i.e. via pictures). The robot arrived in Cesena in the Emilia-Romagna region, and was moved to an agricultural field nearby to carry out its own mission. But what if in the meanwhile the robot falls in love with flowers? Can it learn to become a pollinator itself? That’s to be seen…

The robot will stay in the field until the end of August and will eventually call all the people in Cesena for a final, important, participatory exercise. Before then, you can see it in action here.

Since 2019, the Competence Centre on Participation and Deliberative Democracy has worked on the STING project to develop and test approaches for involving citizens and farmers in the development of actions for reversing pollinator decline. The project is reaching its final phase with the activities on citizen engagements currently conducted in Denmark, Belgium, Poland, Romania and Italy. The project is developed within the framework of the European Initiative on Pollinators (COM(2018) 395) in partnership with DG ENV. For more information, visit the STING website.

About the Author
Tessa has worked at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre since 2017. She works on the Community of Practice for the Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy. Tessa completed a Masters degree in ecological economics and sustainability at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and is now completing her PhD on political science at the same institution. Prior to this work, Tessa was a television journalist at Reuters in Hong Kong before working as a Communication Expert at the European Forest Institute in Barcelona.