Our planet is facing its darkest moments when it comes to preservation of the environment. The ecosystem is constantly threatened by increasing CO2 emissions, waste, clearing of forests and melting glaciers.
In the latest years more and more researchers conducted projects with a focus on environmental monitoring to find out more about these threats and protect the planet. Arribada and Copernicus Technologies (based in UK and Switzerland respectively) are working on an engineering project for tracking plastic bottles in the world's seas, to better understand the ecosystem and the health of our planet.
Arribada has years of experience in environmental sciences, ranging from studies on polar bears, early warning systems to microbial fuel cell development. One of the latest research projects is about tracking the movement of plastic bottles, to find out where plastic waste from the Ganges river and other sources goes. 30 bottles connected to the Argos satellite network were deployed. The Argos ARTIC R2 transmitter allows them to communicate with the next generation ARGOS-4 satellite network as well as the future Kineis constellation of nanosatellites.
Copernicus is contributing to this project by providing a state-of-the-art software platform for monitoring and tracking the transmitters: IoT Wonderland. Using this platform, the state of the plastic bottles is monitored and their movement visualized on a detailed world map.
