Bionic bumblebee backpacks to collect data for IoT smart farms

The bionic backpacks weigh just 102 milligrams, with rechargeable batteries making up the bulk and around 30 milligrams left over for sensors and memory storage. Temperature, humidity and light intensity readings can all be made, but onboard data is severely limited to around 30 kilobytes. The battery, however, is good for approximately seven hours of operation. When the bees return to their hive at the end of each day, the batteries are recharged wirelessly while stored data is uploaded via a technique known as ambient backscatter that makes use of residual radio waves. It’s envisaged the system could replace the use of drones on smart farms, which are currently used for environmental monitoring but are limited in endurance.

“Drones can fly for maybe 10 or 20 minutes before they need to charge again, whereas our bees can collect data for hours,” said senior author Shyam Gollakota, an associate professor in the UW’s Paul G Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. “We showed for the first time that it’s possible to actually do all this computation and sensing using insects in lieu of drones.”