Bosch and Intel develop IoT enabled compact climate monitoring device

Bosch is leveraging Indian innovation skills to monitor pollution levels in the country. The company has developed a Micro Climate Monitoring System (MCMS), a compact IoT-enabled device, offering sensor-based monitoring of particulate matter, carbon monoxide and NOx content in the air.

The company’s Indian operation has partnered with Intel in the US to co-develop the product by leveraging the tech giant’s strengths in the areas of computing, data and connectivity. The joint development began two years ago, with Intel initiating the process a bit earlier, by integrating its Intel Internet of Things (IoT) platform and creating the analytics, cloud and security pillars for the product.

According to Vijay Ratnaparkhe, managing director and president, Robert Bosch Engineering & Business Solutions (RBEI), “Climate risk is pertinent, irrespective of where you are located. When mostly all aspects of daily life are connected and compatible, it only makes sense to have an accurate indicator of environmental quality levels to devise the best living and working conditions.”

Speaking to Autocar Professional, RK Shenoy, senior-vice-president, Powertrain Electronics & Hardware Product Engineering, RBEI, said, “The idea behind this concept was to develop a product to monitor the quality of air so that corrective measures can be taken to change and improve things. The MCMS is based on a state-of-the-art technology, which uses chemical sensors, which have actually helped in substantially bringing down the size of such a monitoring system to 1/100^th of that of a conventional one.”

Alongside, there has been significant cost reduction, owing to the smaller footprint of the device. Data generated from the MCMS could be crunched in the back-end with a host of analytics options available and thus, informed decisions could be made, he added.

Bosch is pitching the MCMS for various applications, including implementation in the Smart Cities of the future, mining space. It also expects the real estate sector to benefit from the instrument, by being able to use the critical data about the air quality around a particular site. The first such implementation is set be in July 2017 in India.

Bullish on export demand

The company is also leveraging government’s Make in India push for the manufacturing of the MCMS. It expects considerable demand from key global markets where there has been a strong focus on the issue of air quality in recent times. Singapore, the US and some European countries are already earmarked for future exports. RBEI in India has planned an investment of Rs 900 crore in FY2018, 15 percent of which will be infused towards its R&D operations.

The fully connected device, integrated over 3G and wi-fi channels, uses high-end data encryption techniques from Intel and the data beamed can be analysed over the cloud, for making real-time decisions like managing traffic flow through a particular area in a city.

With the advent of such devices, which bring in immense analytical support, both Bosch and Intel believe that authorities involved in policy change and policy making will get empowered with factual data to carry out thoughtful decisions in the future.

While the national capital, Delhi is one of the most polluted cities around the world, RBEI’s Shenoy believes that the vehicular population contributes just one-fourth to the complex situation of the city. The vision of the two companies also includes enabling people with environmental information to the level that they would in future be also able to chalk out the least polluted route for their commute, by integrating the objective data into a lot more cloud-based applications.