Producers need to measure pollinator population size, distribution and effectiveness in numerous remote locations

Ecosystems involving commercial bees, feral bees and native pollinators along with weather, climate and other environmental factors are complex. Pollination effectiveness within these complexities can be a key component of crop yields and profitability. Understanding this complexity requires new tools for producers that reveal which species are present, in what abundance, and which specific portions of cropland could benefit from modified pollinator management practices. Beyond the immediate needs of producers are the educators, students, citizen scientists and agency land managers who have all taken great interest in pollinator health and what they can do as individuals to enhance the habitats and systems that support pollinators. This phase I sbir project will determine the technical feasibility of using a newly available lidar on a chip (LOC) to detect insect pollinators and characterize pollination events in the field.numerous teams are working hard to apply AI-powered machine vision technologies to bear on identifying pollinators and other wildlife. The problem with these technology-intensive devices is that they are expensive, require huge batteries and high bandwidth internet connectivity. The way to make AI-powered devices affordable and practical for field use is to use a micro-powered motion detector to turn on the AI power only after a moving target is detected. Commercial trail cameras use a passive infrared (PIR) sensor for this purpose. The problem with a PIR sensor is that IT will trigger only if the moving object is of a different temperature than the background, like a large warm-blooded animal moving across a cooler background. In october 2020 stmicroelectronics introduced the first commercialized multi-zoned rangefinder which is essentially a small lidar on a tiny $9 computer chip. This sensor does not require a temperature differential to detect motion. Our team will be testing the ability of this new sensor to detect small moving objects under a variety of outdoor conditions as a way to produce a small, affordable, micro-powered device for detecting and monitoring pollination events in the field.