Team:GreatBay SZ/Human Practices
Overview
GreatBay_SZ 2020 aims to develop BIOT, an electric generator harvesting energy from moisture in the air to solve the power-supply issues that billions of IoT devices are facing. In order to promote and publicize our project and synthetic biology, we came up with a series of plans for our integrated human practices.
After obtaining a thorough knowledge of the IoT market by a few weeks' market research, we came up with a business plan for our intended product - BIOT battery. To start with, we set out questionnaires aiming to receive feedback from the public about synthetic biology technology and the IoT market. We then sought biotechnology experts from Bluepha Lab for advice on the technical level to do the first significant revision for our business plan.
Aiming at gaining feedback from business experts, attended activities facing enterprises and the general public, such as the 14th IoT exhibition in Shenzhen, to receive feedback on future application and investment directions of our product.
In addition, we also had discussions with experts from the fields of biotechnology and marketing. Several months later, we held a roadshow to a leading technology company in Shenzhen and received guidance on BIOT from investors and cooperating partners' perspectives. With all these experts' suggestions, we further revised our BP for the second and third drafts.
Our last revision for our project design was on market module and investment plans based on advice from two investment experts.
To get a better view of our achievements in human practices, please visit public educationand public engagement.
Questionnaire Facing the Public
At the start of our project, we did research on the market of IoT and conducted a survey facing the local public, aiming at acquiring critical questions and advice from the product's potential consumers and helping the team further explore product positioning in the market, possible enhancement on our battery's performance, and future product applications. The study targets people spanning across various ages, residential areas, and educational levels to obtain a comprehensive perspective of how people of different experiences and eyesights view our project.
Overall, an overwhelming share of consumers hold a positive attitude toward our product design, but some concerns still exist. When we promote the products, we should emphasize that our products are safe and environmentally friendly, and make some certain popularization of science, specifically synthetic biology. Additionally, price and efficiency are also important factors determining whether consumers will buy our products, which are paid more attention to in our wet lab section.
Please see our public engagement page for more details.
Gaining Valuable Advise from IOTE
To make an understanding of the developing trend of The Internet of Things around the world, and to make an observation about our products and to get some valuable advice from professionals, we went to the 14th International Internet of Things Exhibition.
Our team members interviewed the principals and technical personnel of different companies on the venue, and listened to many lectures. While getting the background details of the Internet of Things industry from the R&D and marketing departments of different companies, we also introduced our project to them and got various instructional feedback.
What had we learned?
1. Further understanding of the industry framework
Through listening to the lectures on sensors in the exhibition, we have a deeper understanding of the Internet of Things, especially sensors.
First, the size of the market. In 2020, the sensor's market is up about 10% to the United States, Japan, Germany accounts for 70% of the world market, sensor's main market in China is mainly distributed in the East China area, Pearl River Delta area, etc.
Second, the types of MEMS intelligent sensors. At present, there are 2.6 kinds of MEMS smart sensors, and the Chinese market has basically accounted for half of all sensor types, but the market of medical, biochemical and other sensors is still deficient.
Third, the development trend of sensors of three phases:
The development of sensors has several key technical factors: miniaturization, integration, networking and intelligence. At present, there is a new type of micro-triboelectric passive ultrasonic sensor, which uses friction to generate electricity. Ultrasonic energy is converted into signals to send information, which is the concrete embodiment of miniaturization technology and networking technology.
2. Finding the main point of the realm
We also knew that disposable batteries were the most common source of power for many small wireless devices in the market of IoT. Although the life of disposable batteries is long, they need to be recycled after use, otherwise they will pollute the environment. And the temperature of the environment and the frequency of usage also affect the battery life, accelerating the battery passivation. The labor cost and cumbersome process of replacing the battery also bring troubles to the company. This is a pain point for the Internet of Things industry right now when it comes to powering small wireless devices.
3. Defining the target market
Therefore, we identified our target market in the industry of IoT -- small low-power devices using Lora or NB, especially in some remote locations that are difficult to connect to the power grid. The representative of Winext Technology expressed his affirmation and expectation for the application of our future products in Smart City (such as door magnetism, wireless smoke detector, etc.). Other company representatives, meanwhile, saw the great potential of our product in the realm of environmental monitoring in the future.
4. Improving our product
We also recognized the current shortcomings of this technology and the need to improve it before it can enter the real market through conversations with the heads of various companies.
First, most of the feedback included concerns about the power of our generating module. Because the output voltage and current of a single module are very weak, even multiple modules Stacking modules may not reach ideal output, and further actual detection is necessary. This consideration further strengthens our decision to increase the productivity of pilin through synthetic biology techniques. At the same time, many companies believe that we need to carefully consider the cost of our future products. For this reason, we tried different combinations of RBS mutation in the gene circuit to increase the output of the nanowires, so as to facilitate the subsequent commercialization.
Secondly, service life is another commonly raised issue. The technicians of CIMC ITECH believe that in order to make our products more competitive in the market, we should find ways to improve the stability of the protein nanowire, so that the product life can be measured in years.
Finally, Shanghai PANCHIP proposed that we consider different scenarios when designing our hardware: how should our modules generate electricity when the device is enclosed? We later designed the corresponding hardware for this problem in order to better promote it to the actual market.
Afterward, we managed to increase the productivity and the power generating efficiency through our lab design.
5. Affirmation of us
We have got a lot of Suggestions from this exhibition, among which there are also some affirmation of us. First of all, many people in charge praised the innovation, portability and environmental protection of our project. Some companies thought that if our products could be developed successfully and the corresponding measurement (e.g. capacity/cost/life) could be increased, it would be a great help to their products. There were even companies like Long Sing Technology that have been willing to work with us to provide us with critical components to test. It gave us a lot more confidence in further developing our product.
Acknowledgement
The following companies were the companies we interviewed during the exhibition and the ones that provided us with information.
Solving Technical Problems with MROBOT
After a slight revision on our electrical circuit design with advice from IOTE experts, we later confronted a major problem during our experiments: we were unable to detect a reading for the current in our BIOT module. We decided to seek help from a professional robot and engineering company (MROBOT) for technical support to proceed with our testing experiments. After explaining our project comprehensively to the professional, we talked about our difficulties regarding the current measuring challenge. The company advises us to either decrease the resistance of the resistor in our testing circuit or try to connect the BIOT modules in parallel when observing the current. The company's expertise provided us a direction for future experiments. We followed the ideas obtained from the interview with MROBOT, and luckily, currents of value 200nA-2000nA emerged from our ammeter! We are very thankful that we had the opportunity to have this insightful discussion with MROBOT and thank them for taking the time to discuss our project with us. The successful reads of current and voltage, from the former experiments, allows us to move on to further promotion of our project and possible product design.
Roadshow with a Leading Tech Company in China
Our team is extremely fortunate to interview the leading company of internet and communication technology in China. After discussing our projects' main idea, the company representatives were very keen on learning more about the details of our nanowire protein 'battery,' and they claimed that they were very impressed by what we already had accomplished by that time. However, as a group of critical experts, they provided a few points that we could potentially make improvements on:
Firstly, they suggested we calculate the power of our BIOT modules first before considering its applications. We sincerely accepted their suggestion and went back to our laboratory the next day, aiming to find out the theoretical power of our BIOT modules. As expected, we successfully managed to finish this essential yet straightforward calculation.
The theoratical output power of BIOT
Meanwhile, the technicians questioned the working mechanism of our product as well as the controllability of the water potential gradient within the protein nanowire. They proposed questions on the movement of H+ ions: where would they finally go since, according to the law of conservation, they would not disappear? At the same time, since the system is not a circular closed system, they believed that it would be challenging to monitor and sustain the water potential gradient needed for electricity production.
These questions motivated us to continue working and develop a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of our project.
Developing a Business Plan
After a series of integrated practices, we had developed a deep understanding towards the commercial potential of our product. After targeting our specific market, we began to seek business partners so as to evaluate our project from a business aspect. Thus, we came up with a thorough business plan for BIOT. (To see more in the page of Entrepreneurship.)
In the business plan, we defined our product as a new non-polluting biomaterial that used humidity energy to solve the power supply problem of the existing small IoT terminal machinery. We also included the analysis of the pain points of the market of power supply, meanwhile compared our own product with the other competitors, analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of them.
Additionally, a detailed business model was built. In this part, we carefully considered our potential partners, resources, and customers, as well as the feasible ways to communicate, promote, and profit.
The business plan helps us better present our project to business experts and partners, which in turn helps us greatly in researching the IoT market and making improvements in our planning for the future of BIOT.