A new ‘Pied Piper’ robot protects Oregon’s vineyards from pests with some good vibes

Vincent Vaughn-Uding has a brown marmorated stink bug in a cup, and he’s trying to convince it to leave.

“This one’s deciding to be difficult,” he says, gently coaxing it out onto the branch of a holly bush sitting in a vase in the Oregon State University undergraduate’s lab. “In general, bugs are annoying. They’re very finicky.”

Vaughn-Uding needs the stink bug to stay relaxed so it won’t fly away — and so it’s not too freaked out to strike up a conversation with the other stink bug already hanging out in the holly.

“We put a male and a female on a plant and … we hope for the best that they start talking to each other,” he says.

The bugs don’t talk the same way we do, but they do communicate — with vibrations.

The plan is to record the insect communication so farmers can use the sound against insect pests.

Since there was agriculture, there were agricultural pests — and farmers trying to control them. For insects, growers mostly rely on pesticides, which we know can have real consequences for wildlife, people and our environment.

But if Vaughn-Uding’s new insect-mimicking robot is successful, it would provide farmers a targeted way to control pests without the use of toxic chemicals.

“Our big thing,” he says, “is reducing how much pesticides need to get used.”