New EU-funded tech: it's time for the plants to start talking back.
9 Jun 2014 12:57 PM
Scientists in Spain, Italy and
the UK have developed a way to monitor the effect of climate change and
pollution on the environment, by creating a special kind of plant which have
in-built sensors. The PLEASED
project @pleasedfp7 (PLants Employed As SEnsing Devices) led by the
Italian SME WLAB and part funded by the EU
has developed ‘talking plants’ which act as environmental monitors.
Once inside the plant, the micro-sensors collect the plant's signals,
analyse them, combine them with those of other plants nearby, and produce a
clear analysis of the environment around it. In other words, the plant will
tell you how it feels and why.
Dr Vitaletti, project
coordinator and Chief Technology Officer at WLAB says: “If
understanding is the first necessary step to change, plants can contribute by
providing us with a valuable tool to better understand and monitor our
environment. But then change is up to us.”
Vice-President of the European
Commission @NeelieKroesEU, responsible for the Digital
Agenda, says: “I am proud that EU funds are supporting the work
of these biologists and computer engineers; helping to develop the most
innovative SMEs and the best research centres in
Europe”.
More than €1 million of EU
funding was invested in PLEASED, under the Future and Emerging Technologies(FET)
programme @fet_eu #FET_eu. Read the PLEASED story on CORDIS (also in French, German, Italian, Polishand Spanish).
Talking plants
Talking plants, known as
"cyborg plants" react to various elements such as acid, ozone or
salt. Dr Vitaletti and his team have been creating their prototypes from
low-cost, readily-available components in the hope that everyone, from
nature-lovers to farmers, will be able to make their own plant sensors. Anyone
would then be able, for instance, to determine if a plant needed more or less
sun and water, or how a specific fertiliser was affecting its health. And since
the solution is wifi-based, even monitoring your garden from your living room
would be possible.
Open system
The PLEASED project is making
its architecture open; and the data it collects freely available in the hope
that the PLEASED open community will grow and help them to achieve
better and more general results, by performing their own experiments and
improving its design. "The availability of a large, high quality
dataset is necessary for our project to develop. To use these cyborg plants as
sensing devices we need to develop classification algorithms capable of
understanding the signals generated by plants,” says Dr Vitaletti.
“In particular, we hope that researchers will be able to
test their own classification algorithms on the
dataset.”
Partners in Spain (SME Advanticsys @advanticsys), in the UK (University of Southampton @unisouthamptonand London Institute for Mathematical Sciences) and in Italy (Università degli Studi
di Firenze @UNI_FIRENZE) participate in PLEASED.
A great source of inspiration
for researchers
Other groundbreaking projects
inspired by plants are funded by FET. It is the case of PLANTOID that uses plant roots as a model for
robotics. This new technology could revolutionise soil monitoring and
exploration, and other applications (for example in healthcare or rescue
missions) are foreseen. See these interviews of the project coordinator Dr
Barbara Mazzolai: video & article.
SWARM-ORGAN tries to understand complex living
systems such as the growing of a plant, or cells making an organ, and to apply
these principles to technological systems, in particular more intelligent and
adaptable robot swarms. See this presentation by the project coordinator Prof.
James Sharpe.
The EU is funding
research
Research in the next generation
of technologies is key for Europe’s competitiveness. This is why
€2.7 billion will be invested in FET under the new research
programme Horizon 2020 #H2020 (2014-2020). This represents a nearly threefold increase
in budget compared to the previous research programme, FP7. FET actions are
part of the Excellent science pillar of Horizon
2020.
Have your say on Future and Emerging Technologies! A public consultation is open till 30 June
2014.