Sensor System Riding on Bumblebees’ Back to Collect Environmental Data

Bumblebees now can be used to collect the environmental data thanks to the Living IoT system riding on their backs.

In particular, scientists of the Paul G. Allen School, University of Washington have just released a new study on the invention of a sensing system without wire which is small enough to ride on the back of a bumblebee.

This idea is called the Living Internet of Things (IoT) system. And it is aimed to reasonably replace the manmade drones which are being used to research in the agricultural sector and monitor the environment to collect the weather, light intensity, and humidity data.

Bees with this newly invented system on their back can fly for seven hours to collect the data without the need for recharging battery like manmade drones.

Bumblebees with sensor package to collect environmental data

The tiny package requires only a small amount of power for computation. And the system records the different positions of the insect in two-dimensional space when it is collecting the data of the environment. The insect stores the data until it returns to the hive where the package can upload any data that it gathered through a way which is called backscatter at the end of the day.

It is known that the sensor package riding on the bees’ backs only weighs 102 milligrams. Thanks to this lightweight, this system could be applied in several agricultural sectors like monitoring environment to precision irrigation.

Recently, manmade drones still have been doing these tasks. However, they can be replaced soon due to their weaknesses of high costs and battery life.

For further information, students namely Vikram Iyer, Anran Wang, and Rajalakshmi Nandakumar are those who developed this Living Internet of Things system with the support of faculty members including Sawyer B. Fuller and Shyam Gollakota.