Endurable sensors

An Italian project assistant regularly travels from Rome to CISS in Aalborg to ensure an even better indoor climate for Danish pigs.

Usually, Claudio De Persis works as an assistant professer at the A. Rupertis Department of Computer and System Science at the Univeristy of Roma, where he's specialised in control theory. But around once each three months, he leaves his home country to go to CISS and spend some weeks helping Skov A/S - and thus also the two CISS PhD students who collaborate with Skov - developing intelligent climate control for pig stables. Right now, Claudio De Persis is back in Rome, but vice director of CISS says:

"The vents stables that ensure the replacement of the air in the stable are controlled by a number of sensors. These sensors measure temperature, humidity and CO2. It is Claudio De Persis' job to ensure that these sensors - that are wireless and are situated in different places in the stable - can operate with as little information as possible. That is, he is to cut down the amount of data to a minimum, so that the system is not over-exerted."

"Wireless sensors like that are battery-driven. Therefore, it is important that the users don't need to exchange batteries all the time - and they would have to, if the system was burdened with large amounts of data. In fact, the best would be if the batteries only needed to be exchanged when the employees go through the entire stable anyway - for instance during cleaning before a new stock of pigs move in. That means that the batteries need to last for three months," Henrik Schiøler explains.