This bee's tiny backpack could one day monitor human hearts

As detailed in a paper published earlier this week in Science, a team at Philips Research in Hamburg, Germany recently designed a 1-millimeter-wide sensor employing two opposing magneto-mechanical resonators (MMRs) within a cylindrical casing. They then attached the sensor to a honeybee just above its wings, and released the insect into a small enclosure featuring a variety of flowers to hop between. Researchers wirelessly checked the sensor’s conditions by remotely stimulating the MMRs with pulses of current from electromagnetic coils. How much the magnets oscillated, the distance between them, as well as how much they contracted and expanded subsequently helped the team measure its location, pressure, and temperature. MMRs are generally far more sensitive than other, similar radiofrequency trackers, and are thus also capable of three-dimensional spatial tracking. As such, researchers could track the bee’s flight patterns, as well as its positioning as it walked upside down across the case’s ceiling. The sensor didn’t only stay strapped to its bee test subject—researchers also experimented with using their device to three-dimensionally chart its path through a lengthy, twisting tube simulating a gastrointestinal tract. And if that weren’t enough, the sensor also helped navigate a biopsy needle in a simulated environment, as well as recorded the paths of a writing marker tracing continents’ outlines on a globe.