ICanary

Good air quality is one of the most important aspects of the human well-being. Numerous studies have shown that the air inside our buildings is often more polluted than the air outside. The fact that we spend a large part of our time inside buildings increases our exposure to pollutants and has negative impacts on our health and well-being. It has the consequence of an increase in respiratory illnesses, absenteeism, concentration disorders as well as a loss of productivity with the consequences of obvious socio-economic issues. ICanary project aims to develop conformal air-quality sensors based on a miniaturized sensor chip with an electrode matrix, functionalized by different sensitive polymer nanocomposites and adopting the inkjet printing deposition process. The solution utilizes a proprietary chip, integrating the sensing functionality with the computational unit, communication, energy harvesting, and power management, all in one system. Such air quality smart label is integrated together with flexible indoor photovoltaic panel harvesting and storing energy from the environment. The proposed ICanary solution is not intended to be just a gas sensor, but it falls into the category of e-nose applications with the possibility to tune the sensor array in a digital way to specific application areas indoor/outdoor/industrial applications, agriculture, food industry and medical applications.