“It’s beginning of machines taking over the world”
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Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about mobile technology and the cloud, and there are a number of consumers who complete their day to day tasks with the help of the latest gadgets and the connectivity between them. Why is that? well, it’s because the power lies in the cloud, which holds all of their data and they can access it whenever they’d like. However, while the number of users is rising exponentially due to the increase in ohm’s and cheaper devices, unfortunately mobile devices still lag behind traditional desktops and laptops in terms of computing power and storage.
As a result, a number of manufacturers have created low cost, smaller, and more powerful devices which provide a platform that developers and enthusiasts can engage with, including more customized objects that can “speak” with each other and share information. With this significant growth, a huge number of these “smart” objects have paved the way for connecting our physical world with the internet – and so the “internet of things” (IoT) was born. In short, the devices that surround us (such as computers, tablets, mobile phones, televisions, fitness equipment, vending machines, vehicles, and more) can now connect to each other and share data between them.
These include:
(i) I/O interfaces for sensors
(ii) interfaces for Internet connectivity
(iii) memory and storage interfaces and
(iv) audio/ video interfaces.
An IoT device can collect various types of data from the onboard or attached sensors. The sensed data can be communicated either to other devices or cloud-based servers/storage. IoT devices when connected to actuators allow them to interact with other physical entities (including non-IoT devices and systems) in the vicinity of the device.
How and why was it developed?
The year 1999 was one of the most significant for IoT history, as Kevin Ashton coined the term “the internet of things.” A visionary technologist, Ashton was giving a presentation for Procter & Gamble where he described IoT as a technology that connected several devices with the help of RFID tags for the supply chain management. He specifically used the word “internet” in the title of his presentation to draw the audience’s attention since the internet was just becoming a big deal at that time. While his idea of RFID based device connectivity differs from today’s IP based IoT, Ashton’s breakthrough played an essential role in the internet of things history and technological development overall.
How it gained popularity
Convenience: Infusion of IoT tech means that you can now get your coffee machine to turn on while you finish other work and chores and, when you are done, your coffee is ready.
Ease of use: Tech also needs to be easy to use for it to become popular. The convenience of IoT also comes with ease of usage.
Internet connectivity: Thanks to smartphones and advances in Internet connectivity around the world, more and more people are now connected to the Internet and everything and everyone around them.
Health management: As an increasing number of people suffer from stress-related disorders and chronic illnesses, health tracking devices are becoming popular. IoT devices can be connected to healthcare systems and services. So healthcare systems can now get real-time data on your medical condition and can be alerted to emergencies by the IoT-enabled device for timely assistance.
Characteristics of IoT
Dynamic & Self-Adapting: IoT devices and systems may have the capability to dynamically adapt to the changing contexts and take actions based on their operating conditions, user’s context, or sensed environment. For example, surveillance cameras can adapt their modes (to normal or infra-red night modes) based on whether it is day or night.
Self-Configuring: IoT devices may have the self-configuring capability, allowing a large number of devices to work together to provide certain functionality.
Interoperable Communication Protocols: IoT devices may support several interoperable communication protocols and can communicate with other devices and also with the infrastructure.
Unique Identity: Each IoT device has a unique identity and an identifier (such as an IP address or a URI). loT device interfaces allow users to query the devices, monitor their status, and control them remotely, in association with the control, configuration and management infrastructure.
Integrated into Information Network: IoT devices are usually integrated into the information network that allows them to communicate and exchange data with other devices and systems.
IoT enabled technology
- Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN): It comprises distributed devices with sensors used to monitor environmental and physical conditions. It consists of several end-nodes, routers and a coordinator. End nodes have several sensors attached to them, which can also act as routers. The coordinator collects the data from all the nodes & acts as a gateway that connects the WSN to the Internet. Some examples of WSNs used in loT systems are Weather monitoring systems, Indoor air quality monitoring systems etc.
- Cloud Computing: It is a transformative computing paradigm that involves delivering applications and services over the Internet. It involves provisioning of computing, networking and storage resources on-demand and providing these resources as metered services to the users its resources can be accessed over the network using standard access mechanisms that provide platform-independent access through the use of heterogeneous client platforms such as workstations, laptops, tablets and smartphones.
- Big Data Analytics: Big data is the collection of data sets whose volume, velocity or variety is so large that it is difficult to store, manage, process and analyze the data using traditional databases and data processing tools. It involves several steps starting from data cleansing, data manging (or wrangling), data processing and visualization. Sensor data gathered by loT systems such as weather monitoring stations, machine sensor data collected from sensors embedded in the industry are some examples of big data generated by IoT.
- Communication Protocol: It is the backbone of loT systems and enables network connectivity and coupling to applications. It allows devices to exchange data over the network. Protocols define the data exchange formats, data encoding, addressing schemes for devices and routing of packets from source to destination. Other functions of the protocols include sequence control, flow control and retransmission of lost packets.
- Embedded Systems: It is a computer system that has computer hardware and software embedded to perform specific tasks. In contrast to general-purpose computers which can perform various types of tasks, embedded systems are designed to perform a specific set of tasks. It ranges from low-cost miniaturized devices such as digital watches to devices such as digital cameras, point of sale terminals, vending machines, appliances, etc.
IoT Functional Blocks
Functional block diagram of IoT
An IoT system comprises several functional blocks that provide the system with the capabilities for identification, sensing, actuation, communication. These functional blocks are described as follows:
• Device: An IoT system comprises devices that provide sensing, actuation, monitoring and control functions.
• Communication: The communication block handles the communication for the IoT system.
• Services: An IoT system uses various types of IoT services such as services for device monitoring, device control services, data publishing services and services for device discovery.
• Management: Management functional block provides various functions to govern the IoT system.
• Security: Security functional block secures the IoT system and by providing functions such as authentication, authorization, message and content integrity, and data security.
• Application: IoT applications provide an interface that the users can use to control and monitor various aspects of the IoT system. Applications also allow users to view the system status and view or analyze the processed data.
Applications of IoT
The applications of the IoT span a wide range of domains including homes, cities, environment, energy systems, retail, logistics, industry, agriculture and health as listed below:
•For homes- Smart lighting that adapts the lighting to suit the ambient conditions, smart appliances that can be remotely monitored and controlled, intrusion detection systems, smart smoke detectors, etc.
•For cities- Smart parking systems that provide status updates on available slots, smart lighting that helps in saving energy, smart roads that provide information on driving conditions and structural health monitoring systems.
•Environment- Weather monitoring, air and noise pollution, forest fire detection and river flood detection systems.
•Energy systems- Grid integration of renewable energy sources and prognostic health management systems.
•Retail domain- Inventory management, smart payments and smart vending machines.
•Agriculture domain- Smart irrigation systems that help in saving water while enhancing productivity and greenhouse control systems.
•Industry- Include machine diagnosis and prognosis systems that help in predicting faults and determining the cause of faults and indoor air quality systems.
•Health and Lifestyle- Health and fitness monitoring systems and wearable electronics.
Impact of IoT on future
IoT demands a shared understanding of the situation of users and their appliances. The future of IoT has the potential to be limitless. Advances to the industrial internet will be accelerated through increased network agility, integrated artificial intelligence (AI) and the capacity to deploy, automate, orchestrate and secure diverse use cases at hyper-scale. IoT will fundamentally shift the way people and businesses interact and their surroundings. Managing and monitoring smart objects using real-time connectivity enables a whole new level of data-driven decision making. Finally, it will provide the opportunity for research communities across the globe in different disciplines to share their ideas on these newly emerging fields.
References:
‘Internet of things-A hands-on approach’ by Arshdeep Bahga, Vijay Madisetti
‘IoT fundamentals’ by David Hanes, Gonzalo Salgueiro, Patric Grossetete, Rob Barton, Jerome Henry