WatchPlant: Smart Bio-hybrid Photo-organisms for Environmental In-situ Monitoring

WatchPlant is an EU-funded H2020 FET-Proactive 4-year project that started in 01/2021.

In WatchPlant we develop a system to monitor pollution in cities using methods of phytosensing, that is, using natural living plants as sensors.

A biohybrid system technology for in-situ self-powered monitoring that allows plants to wear AI components and technological interfaces, which results in creating of “smart biohybrid organisms”for environmental monitoring.

main objectives and features of the project:

• develop, deploy and perform an experimental validation of a new bio-hybrid system technology for in-situ monitoring of environmental pathogens, pollution and other impacting factors, together with living plants primarily in urban scenarios, to establish a relation to human health
• integration of the sensors into complex networks, distributed information processing, ?decision-making, modeling and data-fitting among bio-hybrid phyto-organisms
• artificial evolution for optimization of self-adaptation
• integration into existing urban infrastructures from the level of weather/pollution forecasting systems up to ?social networks for proving an ecological/environmental feedback to citizens

official project website: WatchPlant

project partners besides University of Luebeck:

• Instituto Tecnológico de la Energía, Valencia, Spain [coordination]
• Kungliga Tekniska Hoegskolan, Stockholm, Sweden
• Cybres, Stuttgart, Germany
• CIM-mes Projekt, Warsaw, Poland
• Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain
• University of Zagreb, Croatia