Beehive Fogging Robot

• I lead the hardware development of an autonomous robot that dispenses parasite treatments to beehives for Bee Advantage LLC. This prototype presents a significant opportunity to improve dosing uniformity and increase efficiency in large scale beekeeping operations.

• As hardware lead, I designed and manufactured the mechanical, fluid, and electrical subsystems for the robot and worked closely with our software/controls team to meet project goals. This initial prototype utilizes many COTS parts and electronics as our engineering team readily has access to these components.

• A unique aspect of our ultrasonic fogging subsystem is that it can deliver conventional parasite treatments and bacteriophages with phage survivability meeting design targets. Early in development I iterated through three non-ultrasonic fogger types which could also deliver conventional treatments, but resulted in low phage survival rates.

• A patent for the robot can found here: US-12439896-B2


Here is an older CAD screenshot of the robot and a recent fogger.


This diagram outlines how the robot completes it's task. Two pallets were included to simplify the graphic but more than 50 pallets could be treated before a refill.


CAD Screenshot of an older arm. The new arm has a much larger range of motion, better debris/weather tolerance, and a smaller BOM. The inline fan on this iteration of the arm can optionally be added to the new arm.


A photo of an early fogger protoype. This was a "jet nebulizer" based fogger.