Research projects

Why research?

At NOVARIS we take innovation serious. Our mission is to serve industry and government by developing and demonstrating innovative technologies and advanced products that enhance the quality of human life.

Research is fundamental to our mission and collaboration with our customers.

Open innovation?

We fully adopt the Open Innovation principle. Open Innovation reduces the risk of innovation projects, and greatly increases the chance of success.

Open Innovation is focused on uncovering new ideas, reducing risk, increasing speed and leveraging scarce resources.

Which research topics?

We focus in high tech innovations, in which embedded computing, security, wireless communication, and sensor data analytics are key ingredients.

Below you can find a snapshot of some of our research projects that have been performed with our partners and customers.

MEDUWA - MEDicines Unwanted in WAter

Medicines in surface and ground water

MEDUWA-Vecht(e) is a collaborative partnership for innovation working on the entire medicine chain in order to avoid the environmental cycling of pharmaceuticals and multi-resistant bacteria through soil, food, water and air, and back to humans and animals.

The project MEDUWA-Vecht(e) is supported by the INTERREG Va-Program Deutschland-Nederland 2014-2020 – Project Nr.: 142118

 

Manage the complete soil and water system

With the help of information and communication technology, ideas, strategies, and methods are integrated in order to manage the soil and water system in the catchment area. The innovative aspect of the MEDUWA project is that it addresses several stages of the life cycle of pharmaceuticals.

Wireless monitoring of soil and water

Measuring the water quality and quantity of both surface and groundwater is the case study area that is further developed in the project. The universal, wireless monitoring system developed by NOVARIS can be used for numerous real-time monitoring functions. It offers innovative wireless sensing solutions for soil monitoring, in which all sensors are completely wireless, even the ones that are deep burried in the ground. A dedicated low-power network connects the sensors to the gateway.

Easy installation, scalable, and versatile

Completely underground wireless sensors measure various soil conditions, and are connected via the multi-network gateway to the Internet. Up to 100 underground sensors can be connected to one gateway at a distance of several hundred meters. With such a long range, this sensor platform provides a solution for monitoring several hectares of ground with just one wireless gateway.

The multi-network gateway connects to the Internet of Things through LoRa and GSM (GPRS). Moreover it has a BLE connectivity to get all sensor readings on the spot on your mobile phone.

CowDoYouDo - wireless animal monitoring

The quantified cow

In the future, everything is going to be connected to the Internet—even cows, pigs, and sheep.

The CowDoYouDo project investigated novel wireless sensing technologies to continuously monitor the health of animals.

This project is partly funded by the Operationeel Programma EFRO 2014-2020 Oost-Nederland.

The project is developed in close collaboration between NOVARIS Innovative Technologies and TerraTeq B.V. in the Netherlands.

Precision agriculture made easy

With easy to use wireless sensors and advanced data analytics you can track cattle the same way we monitor human health: with always-on, wearable devices that monitors animals wherever they go.

Easy installation, scalable, and versatile

Wireless sensor tags fastened to an animal’s ear collect and perform analysis of biometric and behavioral data on an animal. With a long range low power wireless network connectivity, this tag provides a solution for small, medium, and even large sized farms.

 

Sensor data analytics

With wireless sensors and a sophisticated data platform that provides alert notifications you can know exactly which animal is sick within hours rather than days. Get the right data to make the right decisions.

CareBOX - taking care of elderly at home  

Take care - be aware

The CareBOX project has developed Ambient Assisted Living concepts for elderly people at home. It is based upon easy to install wireless sensors that can detect changes in normal behaviour of the people.

The sensors used are small and tiny, and operate for years on small batteries.

This project was partially funded by the Dutch Mkb-innovatiestimulering Regio en Topsectoren (MIT).

The project has been a collaboration between NOVARIS, Roessingh Research and Development, and CareLabs.

Unobtrusive sensors monitor patterns

The goal of CareBOX is to help and support elderly persons to manage everyday activities using intelligent and pervasive computing technologies. It enables caregivers to monitor the health of elderly people at home. We focus on people with cognitive impairments to optimize their cognitive functioning in the everyday context, in order to prevent or reduce excess disability, and thus improve quality of life and well-being.

Easy installation, scalable, and versatile

The system monitors the persons at their homes during the performance of daily activities. Different types of unobtrusive wireless sensors are used for monitoring them during the day, and raising alerts when abnormal activities are identified.

 

Sensors let Alzheimer's patients stay at home, safely

People in the middle stages of Alzheimer's can still live alone, and safely, knowing that the family keeps close tabs on them. Whenever the person leaves home at strange times, the sensor on the front door alerts the family. A motion sensor in the kitchen helps monitor the eating habits, and another in the bedroom notes when the person wakes up in the morning and catches any sleeping issues. The informal caregivers, normaly family, can monitor it all on a smartphone app and set up special notifications.


Down Under - underground wireless soil monitoring  

Precision agriculture made easy.

The DownUnder project has developed technologies for precision agriculture. It develops innovative wireless sensing solutions for soil monitoring, in which all sensors are completely wireless, even the ones that are deep burried in the ground.

This project was partly funded by the Operationeel Programma EFRO 2014-2020 Oost-Nederland.

The project was developed in close collaboration between NOVARIS Innovative Technologies and TerraTeq B.V. in the Netherlands.

Soil monitoring

Having instantaneous information on soil moisture content, salinity, temperature, and more, soil sensors are an important tool for anyone involved with soil, from a small-town farmer trying to increase his crop yield to researchers looking at how soil retains and off gases CO2.

You can install multiple sensors in the same area, each one buried below the last. This gives you information of what water is doing as it moves down through the different layers of soil (known as soil horizons).

Affordable, ease of installation and versatile

More importantly, advanced soil measurement systems can be found at prices that are affordable for everyone, and thanks to wireless connectivity, very easy to use. Various types of sensors can be attached to the system, and tghus give a valuable insight into the condition of the soil and water. The system is fully battery powered, and can last for years on one battery.

 

Increase crop yields

Plants perform poorly under stress (too much or too little water), so optimizing irrigation schedules can not only lead to bigger yields but a cost savings in less water waste and a lower water bill.

In order to irrigate a particular crop at the optimum level, a farmer would install several probes in one location. One probe would be placed just below the surface of the soil, one in the root zone, and one below the root zone. When water is applied to this soil, these sensors reveal data about how quickly the water penetrates down through the soil.  The farmer can adjust his irrigation schedule accordingly. Furthermore, by seeing if any of the water is making it down below the root zone, the farmer can water less, saving money.

AdHoc Positioning - versatile indoor positioning system  

Don't get lost

Indoor positioning technology provides the possibility to track assets and people and provide navigation in (indoor) environments in which GPS is not available or is too expensive.

In this project we explored novel indoor positioning techniques that are based upon self adaptive calibration techniques.

This project was partially funded by the Dutch Mkb-innovatiestimulering Regio en Topsectoren (MIT).

The project has been a collaboration between NOVARIS, and Locus Positioning B.V.

Self calibrating

Indoor positioning systems often operate using finger printing techiques, which are time-consuming and not effective when conditions change. In this project we investigate self calibrating positioning systems that adapt dynamically to changing environments and conditions, thereby always giving the best performance possible.

This means that no training or calibartion phase is needed thanks to the patented Self Adaptive Localisation.

High accuracy, scalable, and versatile

The project develops a flexible software based positioning solution that achieves superior accuracy (typically less than 1 meter indoor) compared to high-end dedicated positioning systems, while using off the shelf technologies, and available at an affordable cost level, thereby opening many new application areas.

 

Ease of installation

Our solutions uses either an existing WiFi infrastructure or Bluetooth LE beacons to accurately position users and objects inside.

Where traditional positioning systems require that the network infrastructure are positioned carefully, and be pinpointed in their geographical position accurately, we only require a very loose fixed beacon infrastructure. The remaining infrastructure is automatically positioned as soon as they are placed.