Intel will supply Edison Breakout Board kit, a customizable compute platform, to CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, for investigating honey bee health to secure global food supply.
CSIRO will distribute the Intel Edison Breakout Board kit, which is slightly larger than a postage stamp, to research partners in the form of a bee micro-sensor kit. The global IT initiative is part of the Global Initiative for Honey bee Health (GIHH). Intel will place the Edison board inside beehives to monitor bee activity via small Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags that are placed on the bees’ backs.
The sensors record when the insect passes the Intel Edison board as the checkpoint. RFID tag reader and additional environmental sensors attached to the Intel Edison board will capture data. Beekeepers, primary producers, industry groups and governments can use this data and protect the honey bee health population.
Since the world relies on honey bee to pollinate one third of the food we consume, Intel plays a big role in securing the global food supply.
“This way we can share and compare data from around the world to collaboratively investigate bee health. This united effort is an example of the Internet of Things (IoT). The Intel Edison Breakout Board kit is the perfect platform for this type of research,” said Paulo de Souza, office of the chief executive science leader, Digital Productivity Flagship, CSIRO.
“Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, predicted the number of transistors on a computer chip would double every year,” said David Mellers, enterprise solutions sales director of Intel Australia and New Zealand.
How it works?
Intel Edison Breakout Board kit captures data from the hive and sends the information remotely to CSIRO’s Data Access Portal. Researchers use the signals from the sensors attached to the Intel Edison to build a 3D model and visualize how the bees may be moving through the landscape. The Intel Edison board will also collect environmental information, including humidity surrounding the hive, temperature and solar radiation.
Baburajan K
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