Robotic Apiary
As a more cost-effective solution for large apiaries, we want to reuse 🧿Robotic Beehive functionality and equip it with ability to move around the apiary to inspect hives on-demand or on-schedule.
Target audience
Challenges / Requirements
- weather-proof hives
- bee-safe hives
- movement control across hives
- cost-efficient
Vision
We’ll use an improvement over 🧿Robotic Beehive but have it movable between hives.
Design is not set yet and its up for the team to decide on the architecture
Source -
https://beeswiki.com/what-is-an-apiary/
Competition
Compared to competition (ex. 🇮🇱Beewise and their Beehome), we are not doing a revolution in beekeeping that requires reinventing the beekeeping practices, throwing away existing beekeeping equipment (frames, sections). We are following evolutionary and adaptation approach:
- allow beekeeper to scale hive amount more flexibly, not limited to 12/24 hives per container
- allow beekeeper to keep using traditional, existing infrastructure (hive boxes and frames) for sustainability and ease of migration
Ideation
Movement
| Move on rails | Move on wheels | |
| Pros | - simple and predictable movement | - hive positions can be random |
| Cons | - limited reach - hives need to be in line - costs more with larger apiaries | - need to stabilize the X-Y angles to have horizontal plane even |
Construction
| Monolithic | Distributed | |
| Pros | - simple installation, maintenance, setup - good weather protection | - can scale in amount of hives and in their height - cost effective - healthy |
| Cons | - colonies can infect each other - higher cost - loss of existing inventory | - more complex integration, maintenance |
Features as functional requirements
Some generative AI images
Swisslog robot example
