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Towards a bionic IoT: environmental monitoring using smartphone interrogated plant sensors

Yunlong Guo, View ORCID ProfileJohn Canning, View ORCID ProfileZenon Chaczko
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.03.10.483755
Yunlong Guo
1interdisciplinary Photonics Laboratories, Faculty of Engineering & Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Sydney, Australia
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John Canning
2Laseire Consulting Sydney NSW Australia
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  • For correspondence: canning.john@outlook.com
Zenon Chaczko
1interdisciplinary Photonics Laboratories, Faculty of Engineering & Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Sydney, Australia
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Abstract

The utilisation of plants directly as quantifiable natural sensors is proposed. A case study measuring surface wettability of Aucuba japonica, or Japanese Laurel, plants using a novel smartphone field interrogator is demonstrated. This plant has been naturalised globally from Asia. Top-down contact angle measurements map wettability on-site and characterise a range of properties impacting plant health, such as aging, solar and UV exposure, and pollution. Leaves at an early age or in the shadow of trees are found to be hydrophobic with contact angle θ ~ 99°, while more mature leaves under sunlight are hydrophilic with θ ~ 79°. Direct UVA irradiation at λ = 365 nm is shown to accelerate aging, changing contact angle of one leaf from slightly hydrophobic at θ ~ 91° to be hydrophilic with θ ~ 87 ° after 30 min. Leaves growing beside a road with heavy traffic are observed to be substantially hydrophilic, as low as θ ~ 47°, arising from increased wettability with particulate accumulation on the leaf surface. Away from the road, the contact angle increases as high as θ ~ 96°. The results demonstrate that contact angle measurements using a portable diagnostic IoT edge device can be taken into the field for environmental detection, pollution assessment and more. Using an internet connected smartphone combined with a plant sensor allows multiple measurements at multiple locations together in real-time, potentially enabling tracking of parameter change anywhere where plants are present or introduced. This hybrid integration of widely distributed living organic systems with the internet marks the beginning of a new bionic internet-of-things (b-IoT).

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted March 10, 2022.
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Towards a bionic IoT: environmental monitoring using smartphone interrogated plant sensors
Yunlong Guo, John Canning, Zenon Chaczko
bioRxiv 2022.03.10.483755; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.03.10.483755
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Towards a bionic IoT: environmental monitoring using smartphone interrogated plant sensors
Yunlong Guo, John Canning, Zenon Chaczko
bioRxiv 2022.03.10.483755; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.03.10.483755

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