Are We Ready for ‘The Next Prodigious Things’? – IoT: The Dawn of Connected Future

Are We Ready for ‘The Next Prodigious Things’?
             – IoT: The Dawn of Connected Future

What is IoT (Internet of Things):
        The concept of connecting any device (i.e., “thing”) to the Internet to make it talk, listen and perform tasks. This includes everything from cars, machines, cities, healthcare, transportation, communication, industries, Smartphones, coffee machines, washing machines, headphones, lamps, wearable's, and almost anything else you can think of. Basically, a connected life. IoT refers to the active exchange of information between devices previously which are unconnected. According to the reports, by 2020 connected devices across all technologies will reach 200 billion devices or more.
  • IoE (Internet of Everything): Another term for IoT, signifies that IoT is not only made up of things but also of data, process, and people
  • M2M (Machine-to-Machine): A style of emphasizing data transfer between large (sometimes industrial) machines that makes use of instant data transfer to facilitate higher efficiency and prevent problems
  • IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things): A term for M2M technology when it is focuses exclusively on industrial machines
  • V2V (Vehicle-to-Vehicle): It’s nothing but communication between two or more vehicles. It basically maximizes the efficiency, speed, connectivity, and coordination and minimizes the waste, traffic congestion and time by continuously transmitting locational and statistical data between several vehicles with a central hub connected as nodes
From ‘People’ to ‘People and Things’ - The “Smarts”:
The IoT is exploding. It’s made up of billions of Smart devices from minuscule chips to mammoth machines that use wireless technology to talk to each other. IoT world is growing at breath-taking pace from 2 Billion devices and objects to a humongous projected scale of 200 Billion by 2020. For every invention or discovery, there will be a massive exploration of knowledge flowing with many ideas in mind and delivering a huge beneficial output to the economy and society. The use of technology is instructed but the creation of technology is the sophisticated part of it. IoT plays a vital role in connecting things and people. It is interlinked with the modern technologies to understand the usage of its wide range of applications. Smart devices or “Connected devices” are designed in such a way that they capture and utilize every bit of data which you share or use in everyday life. And these devices will use this data to interact with you on a daily basis and complete tasks.
              
  • Smart vehicles: A connected car is a vehicle which can optimize its own operation, maintenance as well as the comfort of passengers using onboard sensors and internet connectivity. These are capable and deployable enough to sense its environment and navigate without human input, using, for example, radar, lidar, GPS, odometry, and computer vision. ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) helps the driver in the driving process designed with a safe and secure HMI (Human-Machine Interface). ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems) are used to give an innovative solution for over-congestions and safety. ECU (Electronic Control Unit) is a generic term for any embedded system that controls one or more of the electrical system or subsystems in a transport vehicle


  • Smart Bulb: A LED lightbulb connected by using Wi-Fi, that typically allows for remote control, automation, and customization
  • Smart City: A city which promotes, practices, and provokes the use of IoT and Green technologies. Typically, these technologies are used to increase efficiency, decrease waste, and improve the quality of people’s day-to-day lives. By installing sensors and using web applications, people can find free available parking slots across the city. Smart Waste management systems can be deployed to overcome the waste bins from over dumping in and around
  • Smart Grid & Smart Meter: The device used to measure electricity, gas, or water usage in a house or building also called a ‘Smart Meter’. These Smart grids will be useful for households, industries, and other areas to provide more customized and eco-friendly experience to the people and to reduce the electricity and other operational costs. It is termed ‘Smart’ because it responds to the usage and will increase or decrease the flow according to the general consumption data of a household(s). AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) allows for two-way communication between a Smart meter and a provider. AMR (Automatic Meter Reading) is used automatically for collecting consumption, diagnostic, and status data from water meter or energy metering devices and transferring that data to a centralized database for billing, troubleshooting, and analyzing.  
  • Smart Home: A home that is enabled with Smart products like a Smart Grid, Smart Bulb, and Smart Devices. The ability to control, customize, and automate temperatures, mood, ambiance and lighting throughout the house, to lock and unlock the doors and windows remotely. In Smart or autonomous homes, the applications range from security systems and climate control to automated televisions, dishwashers, laundry machines, and other appliances. Apple’s Home Kit and Google’s Nest are popular applications. 

                   
  • Smart Label: It’s an enhanced version of a Bar code. It usually contains the details of a product or device. These are often seen as QR (Quick Response) Codes, EAS (Electronic Article Surveillance) tags, RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) tags and etc
  • Smart Manufacturing: Advanced processing and manufacturing technologies, tools and techniques are used to enable the flexibility in addressing dynamic and global markets. It is the foundation of ‘Industry 4.0 – The Industrial Revolution’, where Smart Machines develop a new set of Smarter Machines with the help of Artificial Intelligence and Robots
  • Smart Wearables: It is a type of device which is a wrist-watch like a device that is usually connected to a Smartphone or other wearable device to give the user a control panel like interface on their wrist to perform some actions. Smartwatches often use Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi technologies to communicate. These devices are used for Virtual glasses, Fitness applications, Tracking, Diagnosing and for Notifying the lists todo. Wearable devices are installed with sensors and softwares which collect data and information about the users. This data is later pre-processed to extract essential insights about user
  • Smart Health (Digital health/Telehealth/Telemedicine): Smart health is the emerging fields of IoT applications. The concept of a Smart health care system and smart medical devices bears an enormous potential for the well-being of people in general. IoT in healthcare is aimed at empowering people to live healthier lives by wearing connected devices. The collected data will help in the personalized analysis of an individual’s health and provide tailor-made strategies to combat illness.
  • Smart Retail: Proximity-based advertising as a subset of Smart Retail is taking off. It is mainly focused on the local shops in the global market
  • Smart Dust: The concept of tiny sensors, the size of a grain of sand, with the ability to detect everything from chemicals to vibrations. Applications of these connected smart dust particles in the IIoT are virtually endless, from oil companies spreading smart dust to monitor rock movements to small sensors all over factory equipment continually looking out for changes and problems. These can be sprayed or injected almost anywhere to measure or diagnose problems in the human body 
  • Smart Supply Chain: This industry is scaling up and emerging in a smarter way already. Solutions for tracking goods or products while they are on the shipment or getting suppliers to exchange inventory need to be encashed
  • Smart Farming: With the continuous increase in the world’s population, the demand for food supply is extremely raised. Smart farming is one of the fastest growing fields in IoT. It is an often-overlooked business-case for the IoT because it does not really fit into the well-known categories such as health, mobility, or industrial. However, due to the remoteness of farming operations that could be monitored the IoT could revolutionize the way farmers work. Smart farming will become the important application field in the predominantly agricultural-products. Farmers are using meaningful insights from the data to yield a better return on investment. Sensing for soil moisture, humidity, health, temperature, water level, and nutrients, controlling water usage for plant growth and determining custom fertilizer are some simple uses of IoT. 



The Perspectives of IoT:
Raw Technologies: 
       ‘Foundational inventions and discoveries that drive product innovation and development are not usually sold directly to the people’ – Unknown 
  • AI: Artificial Intelligence is a way of making a computer, a computer-controlled robot, or a software think intelligently, in a similar manner the intelligent humans think. It is accomplished by studying how the human brain thinks, and how humans learn, decide, and work while trying to solve a problem. A machine uses cutting-edge techniques to competently perform or mimic “cognitive” functions that we intuitively associate with human minds, such as “learning” and “problem solving”
  • Bluetooth: One of the world’s most common communications technologies. It allows for data transmission by radio waves over a short distance. BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) is a new technique aimed at servicing IoT devices
  • GPS (Global Positioning System): It’s a technology that allows for location services. It is space-based, transmitted through satellites, and requires a triangulation of four satellites to pinpoint a location on Earth exactly in reference to the coordinates
  • IP (Internet Protocol) Address: It’s a unique designating number assigned to a computer (or any another device) that is connected to a network, most to the Internet
  • NFC (Near Field Communication): It enables two electronic devices to establish a communication medium by bringing them within about 4-6 cm of each other
  • RFID (Radio Frequency Identification): It’s used for data transmission through radio waves
  • Wi-Fi: It allows a device to communicate wirelessly over specific radio brands. It’s mainly used for wireless Internet connection
  • Z-Wave: A communications technology used in security automation and Smart homes
  • ZigBee: A technology providing data communications over a low-power WLAN

Enabling Technologies:
Physical and Digital platforms are used to develop, enhance and enable new services for people.

 
  • LPWAN (A Low-Power Wide Area Network): It’s a WAN that functions using a low bit rate and caters to Smart devices
  • Big data: Large volumes of data is required to transfer or do analysis in order to maximize the efficiency and effectivity of an application
  • Cloud computing: The ‘cloud’ itself is storing the data, but data is stored on physical computers that allow access at any time to the data via the Internet. It allows for data access from distinct computers or devices on a single platform
  • Drones: An UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard
  • Gateway: A “hub that translates” communication between two computers or devices that allows these to understand each other´s data transfer and communication
  • Hub: A hardware device that connects other data-transmitting devices to a central source
  • LORA: Lo-Ra targets WAN applications and is designed to provide low-power WAN’s with features specifically needed to support low-cost mobile secure bi-directional communication in IoT, M2M and Smart city and industrial applications
  • NB-IoT (Narrowband IoT): It is a narrowband radio technology mainly focuses on the standards which lead in indoor coverage, low cost, long battery life, and a large number of devices
  • Sigfox: It is a cellular style system that enables remote devices to connect using the ultra-narrow band, to provide low power, low data rate, and low-cost communications for remotely connected devices. 
Advantages of IoT:
  • Sensors help workers improve product quality
  • Increase revenues from greater product variations and customizations
  • Smartphones can be used to lock and unlock doors remotely, grant access and restrict access to the  person
  • Accessible to maximum people to serve at minimal costs
  • Reduction in costs as automated devices become less expensive to manufacture in mass production
  • Improved Customer Engagement
  • Technology Optimization and Standardization
  • Enhanced Data Collection
  • Real-time monitoring systems are used to monitor data
  • The analysis is easy to perform on the data acquired

Disadvantages of the Internet of Things
           Though IoT offers an extraordinary set of benefits, it also presents an important set of challenges.
  • Security and Safety
  • Privacy and Protection
  • Complexity and Computation
  • Flexibility and Fidelity
Conclusion:

        The future of IoT is more promising and fascinating than this where Trillions of things will be talking to each other and human intervention will become least. IoT will bring a macro shift in the way we live and work. There are many more areas where IoT is making an impact. Networked Toys is one application of IoT which will change the playing experience of kids. IoT can also be used in the detection of environmental issues. It will continue to deliver new opportunities for digital business innovation for the next decades, many of which will be enabled by new or improved technologies. The future of IoT will be Sensor-embedded water pipes, sanitation services, traffic patterns, parking meters and more, Surveillance cameras, Centralized and integrated system control that monitor issues and automatically adjust in traffic flow and more.

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