The State of Internet of Things in the Connected World.
People find intelligent devices increasingly relevant to their lives and are inspired by the possibilities of the connected world. An IoT device is a standalone internet-connected device that can be monitored and/or controlled from a remote location. Sensors (IoT devices) gather data. A wide variety of sensors measure limitless amounts of data such as temperature, vibration, force, pressure, weight, sound, acceleration, tilt, angle, optical, ambient light, electric, magnetic, flow, position, proximity, motion, velocity, humidity, movement, emotion, and presence.
The term “Internet of Things” (IoT) was first used in 1999 by British technology pioneer Kevin Ashton to describe a system in which objects in the physical world could be connected to the Internet by sensors. Ashton coined the term to illustrate the power of connecting Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags used in corporate supply chains to the Internet in order to count and track goods without the need for human intervention. Today, the Internet of Things has become a popular term for describing scenarios in which Internet connectivity and computing capability extend to a variety of objects, devices, sensors, and everyday items.
All the data collected by devices feed into an IoT ecosystem. Internet of things is “An infrastructure of interconnected objects, people, systems and information resources together with intelligent services to allow them to process information of the physical and the virtual world and react.”
The IoT data and information flows that continually emanate people and devices can be aggregated and analyzed to create fundamentally new types of products and services that go with the grain of human psychology.
The 31 billion internet-connected devices will exist by 2020. A family of four will move from having 10 connected devices in 2012 to 25 to 50 in 2022. The protean inventor Nikola Tesla once made a prediction that must have seemed as fanciful to his Victorian contemporaries as the science fiction of the day. He wrote: “When wireless is fully applied, the Earth will be converted into a huge brain, capable of response in every one of its parts.” IOT will create connections with real benefit to improve daily life — today and in the future
Today is a century of the digital revolution —there is a sense in which “global digital brain” is becoming an actuality. Though the Internet is often discussed in terms of aspects of the world entering “virtual reality,” an opposing dynamic is increasingly at play. The Internet is also expanding into the real world, thanks to the availability of such inexpensive technologies as wirelessly connected sensors, triggers, actuators, RFID tags, GPS locators, accelerometers, and even printed QR (Quick Response) codes. Everyday objects are therefore increasingly becoming components of the emerging entity known as the Internet of Things (IoT). Roughly ten billion of such connected devices will be in use in 2019 from smart thermostats in our homes, personal fitness bands on our wrists, observational devices in vehicles to noise, efficiency, and vibration sensors embedded in factory machinery and jet engines, these devices, and the insights and predictions emanating from the resulting analytics, will quite literally be everywhere.
FROM SMART THINGS TO SMART CROWDS
IoT applications have typically focused on efficiency gains. For example, in 2008, UPS gathered data from telematics and mobile devices to better understand where efficiency gains could be made and how to achieve them. Using GPS tracking equipment and vehicle sensors, combined with a driver’s handheld mobile device, UPS captured data about each truck’s route, the time vehicles spent idling or maneuvering, and even whether drivers were wearing their seatbelts.
This technology has recently been extended under the On-Road Integrated Optimization and Navigation (ORION) program, which now provides real-time route optimization to help individual drivers determine the most efficient way to deliver and pick up packages. Under ORION, a reduction of just one mile per driver per day will save UPS up to $50 million per year when it is rolled out to its entire fleet by 2017. With over 10,000 routes optimized, UPS has so far saved more than 1.5 million gallons of fuel and has reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 14,000 metric tons.
The opportunities presented by the IoT do not end with the efficiency gains enabled by better monitoring, control, and optimization. Michael Raynor and Mark Cotteleer, in The more things, change, point out that these information flows can be used to create new products, services, and business models. One interesting paradigm is discussed by William Eggers and Paul Macmillan under the rubric “billion to one.” The idea is those small bits of information emanating from a crowd of individuals can be amassed, analyzed, and used to return customized bits of content or services back to each individual. The transportation app Waze is one example of this model: The app enables drivers (“the billion”) to instantaneously report experiences (such as road hazards, police activity, and traffic accidents) that, when aggregated and analyzed, resulting in a continuously updated, real-time model of the driving environment. Individuals (“the one”) can use this information to plan and adjust routes and destinations in real time.
“If anybody have asked social scientists even 20 years ago what powers they dreamed of having, they would have said, ‘It would be unbelievable if we could have this little tiny Black Hawk helicopter that could be microscopic, fly on top of you, and monitor where you are and whom you’re talking to, what you’re buying, what you’re thinking...’”
The IoT is the expansion of the Internet into the everyday world. It is reasonable to anticipate new products and services centered around the harnessing of collective intelligence in the everyday world. The “billion to one” logic of It illustrates how the bi-directional information flows through mobile Internet devices enable multitudes (in this case drivers) to better self-organize and collectively act in a way that seems intelligent. It enables the driver to select the best route to her destination. But once he or she arrives in that neighborhood he or she often confronts a wasteful and time-consuming hunt for parking. In the future, parking garages will be able to guide the driver to a specific parking spot. Like birds in a flock, IoT-connected cars and drivers can achieve a kind of collective intelligence.
The opportunities for IoT-fuelled innovation are not restricted to any one sector. Consider California’s multi-year drought, which many fear is a permanent feature of the environment. In response, California Governor Jerry Brown announced the first mandatory water restrictions in that state’s history. It is likely that the IoT will be part of the solution.
A “device-centric” IoT approach would be to attach sensors to elements of the water distribution system to unlock efficiencies akin to those achieved by “smart” hydroponic and irrigation systems. This is yet another example of linking devices to networks to achieve greater monitoring, control, and optimization.
An IoT-enabled device and application would be harnessing the collective intelligence:, concerned citizens could install smartphone apps that would enable them to effortlessly report suspected inefficiencies or breakdowns in water distribution and usage to the appropriate authorities. A robust uptick in such signals tagged to a certain location could trigger an investigation. The crowdsourcing ideas could be employed to flag potentially unsafe roads, buildings, and workplaces; unhygienic restaurants and food trucks; emerging risks in complex supply chains; hot-spots of crime, violence, and human rights abuses, and many more.
The Internet of Things holds significant promise for delivering social and economic benefits to emerging and developing economies. This includes areas such as sustainable agriculture, water quality, and use, healthcare, industrialization, and environmental management, among others. As such, IoT holds promise as a tool in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
The concept of combining computers, sensors, and networks to monitor and control devices has been around for decades, the recent confluence of key technologies and market trends is ushering in a new reality for the “Internet of Things’.’ IoT promises to usher in a revolutionary, fully interconnected “smart” world, with relationships between objects and their environment and objects and people becoming more tightly intertwined. The prospect of the Internet of Things as a ubiquitous array of devices bound to the Internet might fundamentally change how people think about what it means to be “online”.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is being deployed to solve some of the most pressing issues in global development. From poverty alleviation to improve sustainable water and sanitation management, connected technologies are being used to improve service delivery and development outcomes.