WTF are IoT and Industry 4.0?

More and more often, we can face with mentions of IoT (Internet of Things) and Industry 4.0 in the Internet. In fact, not everyone makes sense what these concepts mean. So, in this article we will try to figure it out.

IoT: instead of introduction

In 1926 Nicola Tesla gave an interview to “Collier’s” magazine. He said that in future radio would be transformed into a “big brain”, all things would be a part of the unity whole and tools, helping to make it possible, would be able to settle in pocket.

This was the first mention of concept today called Internet of Things. It was almost 100 years ago, but people had already thought about creating a net, which would unite things surrounding us.

In 1990 John Romkey created the first Internet-thing. He connected a toaster to the Internet. The idea of “smart” toasters didn’t go any further. Anyway it was the first evident stepping stone to building the unity whole Tesla had been talking about.

In 1999 Kevin Ashton gave a generic term “Internet of Things”. About 10 years after, in 2008–2009 amount of networked things exceeded number of networked people. It was an important passage from Internet of People to Internet of Things.

A little bit more IoT specifics

There are a lot of definitions of this concept, for example, one of them is:

IoT is a single network, which connects both objects: surrounding us in the physical world and virtual objects.

Hence, we can formulate the definition of “thing” in terms of IoT:

“Thing” is every physical or virtual object, which exists and can be uniquely determined.

Internet of Things is not only a variety of devices and transducers combined with each other via wire and wireless link channels and connected to the Internet. It’s closer integration of physical and virtual worlds, where people communicate with smart devices.

I realize that it’s hard to catch the essence through these formal meanings, therefore, I’ll express in other simpler words:

IoT is a conception of connection ready-made to the Internet in order to allow them to interact with each other and with the environment, accumulate useful information and accomplish some actions based on received information by themselves, without human participation.

By ready-made I mean such things as: cars, thermostats, refrigerators, washers, cookers, different kinds of robots etc.

Towards smart production

In fact, IoT and Industry 4.0 are both describing the same process — the connection of things to the Internet. What’s the difference? As you can mention, IoT is relating to a consumer, but Industry 4.0 is relating to production.

The book name “Industry 4.0” was offered by German industrialists in 2011 in Hannover. They declared that the Fourth Industrial Revolution started, because of rapidly increasing economical and social digitization. In order to speed up the process of machines internetization, they created a strategy of production developing — “The platform of industry 4.0” and a state program — “Industry 4.0”.

Industry 4.0 combines production methods with state-of-the-art information and communication technology. In the world of Industry 4.0, people, machines, equipment, logistics systems and products communicate and cooperate with each other directly. Production and logistics processes are integrated intelligently to make manufacturing more efficient and flexible. At the same time, manufacturing costs can be reduced despite the individualized manufacturing.

In terms of AIRA

Collaboration of IoT and Industry 4.0 gives us a new approach to production and consumption; therefore, its development will result in decreasing of human labour in production. This collaboration we use in the AIRA project. Our developers are working at the AIRA technology, which will allow moving to a new level of business interactions. In terms of IoT and Industry 4.0 AIRA will answer the questions:

· How to provide a property passage to a consumer, if there is no human taking part in the process of production?

· How can a fully automated enterprise follow changing human needs?

· How to provide direct interactions between robots of different enterprises?

· What is a separate robotized unit? How to collect taxes from it?

To conclude, in our century of automation it’s really important to have a cross functional way to organize smart production for those, who suggest goods and services, and to get these goods and services for an ordinary consumer. AIRA is that way. So, let’s build robot economics together with Airalab!