VOA常速英语2019--研究气候变化的新方法：在蜜蜂身上装传感器（在线收听）

This tiny sensor mounted on a bumblebee is monitoring all kinds of important environmental data. This is the brainchild of a group of researchers at the University of Washington. What made us start the aim of this was our prior work on building insect-sized robots. This is an insect-sized robot.

这个卫星传感器装在了一只大黄蜂的身上。该传感器可以监测到各种重要的环境数据。这是华盛顿大学一组科学家的研究成果。触发我们有这样一个目标的是我们打造昆虫大小机器人的首要工作。这个机器人跟昆虫一般大小。

It works but the on-board battery adds too much weight to make it a good flier. So the team decided to use a bee instead of a battery. If we could have a sensor that flies around, we could do things like monitor the temperature, humidity in different parts of a farm to better understand the, you know, the weather conditions there and maybe improve crop yields. It can also provide clues about what is causing bee colonies to collapse, and monitor the inevitable march of climate change. The other thing that we could do is use this as a platform for biology research itself to answer questions about, you know, what bees are doing, how their behavior is affected by say, pesticide and changing climates and things like that. Getting the information from the circuit boards was problematic, so the team put small receivers on the edges of the field that monitored the bee’s location. And we placed the bees around the field and we collected data and it can reach up to 80 meters and can localize it within two to three meters of arrow.

机器人确实可以使用，但是其机载电池重量过大，所以机器人的飞行不是很顺畅。鉴于此，该研究组决定用蜜蜂来代替电池。如果我们有能四处飞行的传感器，我们就可以做一些事情，比如监测农场不同地方的温度和湿度，从而更好地了解天气情况，或许还能提高产量。可飞行的传感器可以提供线索，让人了解蜂群为何崩溃紊乱，同时也能监测来势汹汹的气候变化进行到了什么程度。我们还可以做一件事：通过这个平台来进行生物学研究，从而解答一些问题，比如蜜蜂在做什么，它们的行为会受到杀虫剂、气候变化等因素的何种影响。从电路板上获取信息时总会出现一些问题，所以该小组在场地边缘放置了小型接收器。接收器可以监测到蜜蜂的位置。此外，我们在场地各处都散布了蜜蜂，并收集它们的数据。收集范围可达80米，并可定位到2-3米的距离。

So that’s enough for the agriculture task that we want to target. The sensor is incredibly lightweight and doesn’t seem to change the bees flight patterns or behavior. So the team is considering adding some components. We’re trying to see next what other things we can put on it, for example, if we can put something like a camera or other sensors, things like that. Each bee backpack can only store about 30 kilobytes of data, but the team is working on upping those numbers.

这足以满足我们在农业领域的目标任务。传感器质量极轻，而且目前来看，并不会改变蜜蜂的飞行模式或行为。所以，该小组正在考虑增加一些组件。我们正试着放其他东西在上面，比如，相机或者其他传感器之类的。每只蜜蜂的背包只能存储30kb的数据，所以该小组正在努力提高负载量。