How IoT has changed the game of football (soccer)!

Sitting on a cross country flight, I was fortunate to watch the Arsenal v. Swansea British Premiership match. This late in the season, every goal counts. Not only are the teams at a race for the finish to capture points via wins, they are also differentiating themselves at the finish by the number of goals.

Up until the the 89th minute, score was 0-0. Swansea's Sanchez fires a shot and its saved by the keeper. Or is it? Micro-seconds later the official's "watch" buzzes indicating it was a goal. Players circle him debating that it was saved by the keeper. But, the goal line technology says otherwise. Sure enough, the broadcasters zoom in closer and indicate it was indeed a goal. It was actually a goal by quite a bit.

Although IoT seems to be the buzz word of late, this is an example of IoT at the core. A sensor is placed in a ball that undergoes hours of being knocked around where information can be collected and analyzed. But the most important part of this cycle is that the information that is collected actually not only influences but dictates decisions. In this case, it caused Arsenal the match and made second place in the league nearly impossible. Not the turnout I was hoping for, but a reality nonetheless.

Although this is an interesting example of how connected devices are impacting our day to day, where is this industry headed. Hard to think that in the not so distant future we will wonder how we ever made products in the past. You mean we actually made a machine that we didn't monitor and tweak through its lifecycle? You mean to tell me we actually built products, marketed them and sold them through various channels and once they were purchased, that's it? We never tracked their behavior, usage or durability? We, at Autodesk, are looking at the broader Cyber Physical design space to see where we can help.

Big changes coming in the world of Mechanical Design. We are designing smart products, but I do not think we are designing smartly. We have many disconnected workflows and processes that are ripe to be improved. We will be forced to fix these processes. If we don't, our competitors will. Hard to believe we will want to be known as the company that makes "dumb" products.