How bees navigate the world – an interview with Paul Graham

University of Sussex biologist Dr Paul Graham will be showing how bees navigate their world with his interactive gaming experience, Getting Buzzed, at the North Laine Brewhouse in Brighton on 6 September as part of this year’s British Science Festival.

Put on your bee goggles to see into the future of robotics

What first sparked your interest in science?

I fell into traditional science subjects at school because of an old-fashioned outlook from my teachers, who thought that boys should be engineers or some such. My genuine interest in science was sparked when I realised that other scientific subjects, such as psychology, existed outside of what schools taught. I was fascinated by the possibility of a scientific approach to minds and brains.

What’s it like to have a ‘eureka’ moment?

Not all of us get to have eureka moments where we solve a massive problem in an instant, then write the paper the next day, and wait for the applause. My eureka moments involve exciting ideas for new experiments. The feeling is one of giddy excitement and a sense that you have to get to work immediately.

What will the audience learn at your event?

We will demonstrate the impressive cognitive and computational feats of bees as they forage for food and navigate through their environment. We hope to demonstrate how a good understanding of these mechanisms would be very useful for engineers hoping to build autonomous robots.

What’s important about your area of research?

If we can use an on-board computational simulation of a bee’s neural circuits to control an autonomous robot it will be an unprecedented achievement, representing a step-change in robotics technology.

Which scientific discovery or invention has made the greatest difference to your life?

Whichever discovery led to cheese-making.

Which scientific mystery would you most like solved?

I am most interested in the mystery of how living organisms became intelligent. I don't think this can be solved in one fell swoop, but we can incrementally learn more and more.

Which scientists (alive, dead or fictional) would you invite to a summer picnic?

Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler and Ray Stantz (The Ghostbusters) just in case something spooky goes after the cheese.

Dr Paul Graham will be showing how bees navigate their world with his interactive gaming experience, Getting Buzzed, as part of the British Science Festival.