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  • Author Author: doctorcdf
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IoT Lives!

doctorcdf
Smart HomeThere has been a bit of chatter this week that the Internet of Things, or at least the three letter acronym IoT...is dead. Indeed our friends at Electronics Weekly wrote a comment piece this week "IoT RIP" which kind of suggests it might be.
Now I don't want to upset anyone but when I was at Electronica, I saw no indication that the days of the IoT acronym were numbered. On the contrary, it was all IoT all the time. I did see evidence that the technology is moving from the "hype" phase to the mature phase, but that simply means it will become more practical and embedded into our lives in the future.
Characterizing IoT as "ubiquitous sensing" omits a critical component of that technology. IoT is more than just hooking up a collection of sensors. It is not just about getting sensor data remotely from one location to another. It’s about efficient decision making just as much as it is about sensing.
I'm very fortunate to work with innovative engineers as part of the element14 community. We recently concluded a design challenge called "Forget Me Not" which centered around IoT. As evidence that the technology goes beyond sensors, Frederick Vandenbosch developed an IoT alarm clock which taps into the Belgian railway time table. No sensors are involved, but the clock enables Frederick to tell time, set an alarm and get appropriate train transit instructions so as to maximise the amount of rest he gets. He also plans to extend this project out to traffic networks for driving instructions.
We at element14 are not the only ones with big plans around IoT. Bosch is investing heavily in IoT technologies for industrial purposes. Cisco has been rolling out smart city programs in Barcelona and Amsterdam to help with efficient decision making related to city infrastructure. We're also collaborating with Cisco, Texas Instruments, Würth, Sierra Wireless and the Eclipse Foundation on a new design challenge called "In the Air" by which pollution in a given area can be measured to enable efficient decision making.
To sum up, retiring IoT for "ubiquitous sensing" would be an inaccurate characterisation of this phenomenon. IoT is not just monitoring things on an iPad. It’s machines enabling efficient decision making for our convenience, our productivity, our economy and our environment.
Let us know what you think by adding your comments below.
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  • IoT has a lot of buzz going on right now. Until the "Me too" dies down, the real benefits will be masked by the euphoria IMHO.

    Clem

  • Christian

     

    IOT is fine, but there also needs to be some management of the devices so they don't wipe out the internet bandwidth by simply broadcasting data non-intelligently.

     

    The modern world seems to want 'instant' everything, but in reality a lot of this information doesn't need to be instant or even real time.

    In many cases it is the trend that the system is adjusting for.

     

    What would be rather nice is these companies putting together some form of common control protocol that can be used by all the simple devices.

    This would allow 'xyz' to design and build this part, while 'abc' does this part and the consumer can then put together an integrated efficient system that was expandable and not locked to a single vendor.

     

     

    Mark

  • Hi Christian,

     

     

    Great points!! I'd not seen the EW article, but it does seem to dwell on just sensors. In fact there are plenty of companies with sensor products, but not complete IoT or IoE solutions.

    There are other inputs (like Frederick's clock). And sensors becomes just one part of the bigger picture.

    Sensors on their own are one thing, but scalable communication, data processing, and ability to create useful applications is needed. Things like local (fog) computing becomes important to gain some intelligence locally, and in fact reduce sensor flooding of data.

    So important things are platforms and cloud services (XaaS), analytics capabilities in the cloud, and all the applications that people will use or will connect machines together.

    The diagram below from "IoT:Smart Objects" by Giancarlo Fortino (reduced in size for fair use) shows an example architecture where on the left it shows different inputs such as social networks and intelligence from big data such as maps or weather reports (this is just one example architecture, others are different but all have a layered approach to try to reduce the complexity and make it a platform that can scale in devices, apps, users etc).

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