Project Kappa: An augmented-reality based sensor data crowdsourcing platform for environmental monitoring

Recent advancement in sensor technologies and internet of things (IoT) paved ways for the deployment of sensor networks for environmental monitoring. However, current sensor network requires the use of networking modules, such as WiFi, LoRaWan, NB-IoT or SigFox (LP-WAN), which requires higher power demand. The main feature of Project Kappa the synergy between the use of augmented reality (AR), gamification, Bluetooth and cloud-based IoT servers to crowdsource environmental sensor data acquisition. The application incentivizes users to connect their smartphones to low-powered environmental sensors via an augmented reality game. Once connected, data transmission between the sensor node and the cloud server will be made via the phone’s internet connection, reducing the need for power hungry networking modules. As a proof-of-concept, this paper describes the development of an air-quality monitoring sensor node, the augmented reality app, and its subsequent integration the cloud database. The prototype was tested with a group of 80 volunteers, demonstrating the viability of deploying the system for real world application.