RFID tags are the perfect platform for sensors: cheap, small, and with an infinite lifetime because they harvest energy from RF signals when communicating. Their only problem is a very limited communication range. In this project with Travis Deyle and Jennifer Wang, we used mobile robots to distribute and read sensorized RFID tags.
We explored applications in Agricultural Monitoring, Infrastructure Monitoring, and Water Quality Monitoring, and used autonomous aerial drones and ground vehicles to communicate with distant tags planted over a wide area.