The Shape of the Future — Episode III: Internet-of-Things (IoT)
The world is developing technology at an increasing speed, and it can be hard to keep up with these developments. So when I decided to start a series of technology articles, I wanted to simplify the current trends to allow as many people as possible to understand them. Welcome to The Shape of the Future, where we will look at the technologies shaping our tomorrows through the lens of today’s world.
The IoT is nothing but a network of machines communicating with each other without human participation over the internet.
Unlike last week’s Machine Economy, this Internet-of-Things already exists, also in an early stage.
The IoT is based on the idea of a machine sharing data with another, or many others. An example we are all familiar with, as it is a popular topic nowadays, is smartphones.
Every smartphone is connected to the internet, sending its location, usage, and app data to computers and other phones directly and indirectly without the human owner initiating this data transfer.
Weather sensors are another popular example, sending their data to machines reliant on certain conditions. Air conditioning might be turned on or off according to this data.
Machines may report they are malfunctioning and get their shutdown order from centralized systems; this is rather common in today’s factories. Humans often make that decision still, but a growing number of factories have fully automated this process.
All this data is sent through networks from one machine to another.
There are even older examples of this. The oldest IoT application is probably the computer that auto-updates because it is informed by another computer that an update is available.
Sensors register a sound in a machine that is unusual. They send the sound to a computer system, comparing the sounds with a databank to find out if there is a malfunction. That is called predictive maintenance and has become quite a thing for machine producers all over the world.
There is a farm near San Francisco that is entirely run by machines. Sensors estimate weather, growth, insect infestation, etc. and inform other machines to harvest, seed or spray poison on the fields. It registers the amount of grain in the depot and decides into which depot a harvest shall be brought. All these transfers of data of all these sensors and machines communicate through a network with each other. It’s their own internet, so to speak.
If machines create this internet among themselves without the use of an actual online connection, it is called a mesh network. Some scientists have the theory the IoT will be nothing but a global mesh network.
The way how machines connect are many and “connectivity” is a big topic for those who design IoT devices. Some use WiFi, some use mesh and some actually use the ordinary internet through hardwired connections.
Key driving factors of the growing applications of IoT are miniaturization and the rise of AI, as the capacity to act autonomously based on the data the IoT provides is key to the effectiveness of the systems connected to the IoT.
There are already over 30 billion devices communicating with other machines nowadays in operation, making the IoT already bigger than the human internet in regards to usage. This number will go up to 75 billion by 2025, making the IoT the largest communication network on the planet.
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/471264/iot-number-of-connected-devices-worldwide/
