IoT beyond sensors and passive devices – The rise of smart objects

We all know that the internet Of Things (IoT) is about novel services that combine data and services from numerous internet-connected devices, while involving interactions with people (i.e. people-to-things interactions)  and other objects (i.e. machine-to-machine (M2M) interactions).

The rising momentum of IoT is, therefore, propelled by the proliferation of internet-connected objects. Gartner estimates that there are already several billions of internet connected devices[1], while it is also expected that this number will continue to grow in an exponential pace, leading to several tens of billions of connected devices by 2020[2].  However, the development of IoT technologies is no longer driven by the exponential increase in the number of low-cost, multi-purpose devices, but also by the rise of smart objects, which feature embedded intelligence and are able to execute part of an IoT application’s logic.

From Passive Devices to Smart Objects

During the last ten years, IoT developments have prioritized the development of architectures and platforms, which can deal with numerous internet-connected objects and their interactions in a scalable and secure way that provides decent performance and quality of service. This is for example the case with IoT platforms by major IT vendors, such as Microsoft Azure IoT[3], Amazon AWS IoT[4], IBM Watson IoT[5], SAP HANA[6], LogMeIN’s Xively[7] and more. These platforms emphasize integration of IoT devices and their data in the cloud, with a view to easing application development, along with scalable and secure management of data and transactions associated with internet-connected objects. State-of-the-art deployments based on these platforms provide the means for handling data and services from many thousands of sensors and other devices in the scope of IoT applications in smart cities, smart buildings, smart energy, smart water management and more.

Nevertheless, these platforms and their applications are usually focused on supporting passive or semi-passive devices with very limited intelligence, which do not typically provide actuation capabilities. Typical examples of such devices include sensors, wireless sensor networks (WSN), radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and readers, Arduino boards programmed with limited logic and more.

The expanded use of such passive devices has led to many added-value applications, notably pervasive monitoring applications that acquire data for business process improvements (such as smart grid or traffic optimization) and optimal decision making (e.g., better urban planning). However, it leads also to the misconception that IoT is only about pervasive data collection and the intelligent processing of these data. On the contrary, a great part of IoT’s business value in the coming years will lie in the use of smart objects with embedded intelligence, which will offer sophisticated actuation capabilities.

The latter capabilities will enable increased levels automation and intelligent interactions that obviate the need for error prone human involvement.

Prominent examples of such objects include:

  • Industrial robots automating supply chain tasks within a warehouse.
  • Socially assistive robots acting as human-centric companions for people with chronic conditions.
  • Self-driving vehicles ensuring autonomous and safe driving.
  • Smart pumps optimizing the water infrastructure in cases of leakages.
  • Intelligent machines that are able to predict their end-of-life and reschedule production activities accordingly.

All of these objects are at the very core of emerging IoT applications, which are expected to shape the IoT market in the next few years, such as applications associated with autonomous driving and the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) (e.g., predictive maintenance and supply chain collaboration applications).

Supporting Smart Objects: Challenges and Future Outlook

The rising importance of smart objects in IoT applications will be pushing existing IoT/cloud platforms to their limits. The main reason for this is that smart objects will boost an entire new paradigm for IoT applications, which will emphasize the decentralization of IoT application logic between different platforms and internet connected objects. This will be due to the fact that objects such as robots, intelligent cars and smart machines will be able to act autonomously and host part of the IoT application logic. Hence, the logic of an IoT application will no longer reside in a centralised cloud infrastructure. Rather, it will be distributed across various smart objects and the cloud. This requires new paradigms for managing the lifecycle and the state of smart objects, ensuring the communication of the platform with the object towards synchronizing their actions, as well as for securing the IoT application through considering potential vulnerabilities and hacking of the smart objects themselves.

Furthermore, it also requires changes in the ways objects are registered and dynamically discovered in IoT platforms, as directory services need to consider the state and lifecycle of objects, in addition to their static properties (e.g., their type, location and capabilities).

Apart from enhancing the capabilities of IoT platforms towards supporting objects with embedded intelligence, the rise of smart objects enables also a new wave of applications involving interaction between different platforms and smart objects. For example, we will soon see machines ordering spare parts upon detecting their end-of-life, smart appliances ordering detergents, refrigerators undertaking replenishment,  as well as self-driving vehicles exchanging information among themselves (i.e. V2V communications), but also with pedestrians (i.e. V2P interactions) and the smart city infrastructure (i.e. V2I interactions).

Such interactions will typically involve adherence to smart contracts between the smart objects and the platforms involved, which makes blockchain technology ideal for their implementation and deployment. Indeed as we outlined in an earlier post[8], the blockchain provides a scalable distributed ledger where transactions between smart objects, platforms and machines could be logged and smart contracts could be enforced, in a secure, trustful and scalable way. Moreover, smart contracts will boost the deployment of a host of new business models, which will emphasize the engagement of the smart objects themselves as first class citizens in the business transactios.

Overall, the rise of smart objects will be soon leading to a complete rethinking of the structure of IoT deployments, as a means of evolving IoT automation to the next level and enabling relevant business models. IoT is not only about sensing and processing data, but also about leveraging opportunities for engaging objects in real world transactions and interactions. Smart objects with embedded intelligence and (semi)autonomous behaviors will be shaping the next generation of IoT applications and significantly contributing to IoT’s business value. It’s certainly time you prepare for deploying and using smart objects in your IoT applications.

 

[1] http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3598917

[2] http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/popular-internet-of-things-forecast-of-50-billion-devices-by-2020-is-outdated

[3] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-of-things/azure-iot-suite

[4] https://aws.amazon.com/iot/

[5] https://www.ibm.com/internet-of-things/

[6] https://www.sap.com/product/technology-platform/iot-platform-cloud.html

[7] https://www.xively.com

[8] https://theinternetofallthings.com/why-5g-is-the-way-to-go-for-the-internet-of-things-1252016/

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