A Sneak Peek on the Trending Era of Internet of Things

One of the on-going technological trends in 2018, that has impacted massively, is internet of things (IoT). With increase in the number of smartphone users and the innovations in the implementation of smart devices, the IoT applications depend heavily on the real-time data availability through various users or sources. These applications use the machine learning (ML) models, advanced mathematical, computational and statistical resources to analyse and interpret the derived data and provide insights for making critical business decisions. The data is trained with the help of Artificial Intelligence and other learning models to make predictions about the future business or to make proactive resolutions for the business prosperity.

IoT is on the rise as it is pervading into every industry. As IoT is based on the real time data, the industries are making use of the near real time insights to stay well-informed about the real time developments happening in their surrounding environments, with an aim to generate the realistic goals and pave ways for improvements for the sustainable growth of the industry.

The following is a gist that covers most of the trending IoT cases-

Consumer Internet of Things (CIoT)

The smart devices are on the rise. These include the smart speakers, smart locks, smart home assistant, smart plugs, smart lights and smart electronic appliances for indoors and outdoors. It allows the consumers to consume and control the environment in a better and efficient way. It helps to save a lot of energy and costs at the same time, with greater convenience. With the automation entering into every day human lives, the IoT marketplace is letting the consumers to lead a connected life, with people, machines and environment. The IoT devices helps the individuals to micromanage their needs dynamically and flexibly with the help of intelligent softwares and sensors. The CIoT could be used for -

• Home security systems can be modernized to prevent the burglary or any unauthorized intrusions, making every house a safe place to reside;
• Smart homes and smart building could be the assets of the smart cities, an effort made not only towards ease of living but also towards the energy conservation and efficient resource management of all forms;
• Caring elderly, where the different types of wearable monitoring systems or sensors can track the activity of the elders and send alerts or notifications to their caretakers;
• The smart watches/spectacles and such wearable devices also promotes the fitness among the younger generation. It encourages them to follow healthy lifestyle;
• Possible use of virtual personal assistants would probably integrate into the network with the help of location, sensors, mapping software, RFID tags, smartphones, GPS, Bluetooth, etc., to avoid the network coverage issues where distance was a constraint.

Internet of Medical Things (IoMT):

It's not just IoT, IoT used in medical care is termed as IoMT. Healthcare is one of the huge industries which constitutes hospitals, health care systems and technologies, health plans, third-party administrators and consumers. The IoMT enabled healthcare has impacted the healthcare providers, the healthcare consumers and the healthcare insurance companies.

If the health consumers (patients) are provided with the wearable monitors, then it would allow the health providers (doctors) to keep track of their health remotely, on a daily basis rather than at historical intervals. These consumers can also communicate to their health providers through virtual assistants. It can help patients with Alzheimer's, Speech impairment, Autism, Parkinson's disease, neural disorders etc.

The hospitals can use the IoT devices to not only manage their administrative tasks and resources, but also they can keep track of working conditions of all their equipment. Any indication of critical damage to the hardware/equipment can be attended as a part of preventive measure to ensure smooth functioning of the systems.

The insurance companies when connected with IoMT systems can back track the historical records of consumers to understand their health condition better. They can suggest them the best suitable premium rates. Based on the data from the IoMT devices, these health payers can evaluate the consumer and segregate the profiles of high-risk and low-risk members. They can also ensure to complete the due diligence processes, billing and claim processes within lesser timespan, avoiding any unnecessary delays during the treatment.

These health insurance companies can also collect the data from IoMT devices to study about the consumer health choices and lifestyles. They can come up with rewarding schemes and benefits for their consumers, who maintain the premium rates as low as possible year-on-year. Thus, this kind of preventive action would drive the focus of the community to cultivate the good habits and maintain healthy lifestyles.

Thus, IoMT is more to do with building a preventive health care system. The IoMT is providing many such opportunities that are absolutely beneficial to many stakeholders of the health care system.

IoT to help environment:

Oil spilling from an oil platform or any tragic incident is one of the most disastrous environmental events that potentially harm the nature for many consequential years ahead, killing thousands of sea habitats, polluting the sea water. The Taylor spill and the deep water horizon tragedy are the biggest unforgivable environmental disasters to name. Any kind of oil spillage in the ocean/sea does not subdue easily and it takes years for it to pacify. The matter of concern is A) the lack of effective/ preventive and maintenance measures in place, causing such disasters, B) the lack of effective measures to detect or clean up the oil spillage, after the disaster, C) the lack of proper underwater communication systems.

These concerns are beyond the reach of human ability and hence the humans need the technologies, like IoT, to intervene and work on behalf of them. Though IoT enablement for underwater is a challenging operation, the plan is to implement the IoT enabled underwater vehicles, robots, and other prototypes that can simultaneously scour the underwater and monitor the changes with an ultimate aim to protect the oceans/seas. The scientists and the other stakeholders attached to the oceans/seas, can collect the relevant data through the IoT devices. This data could be related to the occurrence of the natural disasters like tsunamis, whirlpools, or it could be about the general monitoring of the sea water changes such as temperature, salinity etc. They can also study the sea habitats and survey on their health, discover the wrecked ships and minerals, discover the archaeological evidences of the submerged regions, and delve more into the unknowns.

The protection of underwater using IoT is just one instance. The IoT devices, systems, sensors and applications help the resource conservations of all forms and can be designed to be vigilant of occurrence of any other natural calamities like climatic changes, volcanoes, earthquakes and floods. It could be done by:

• Deploying the sensors in the air/water monitoring systems to detect the air/water quality, the percentage of hazardous radiations or chemicals in the air/water,
• Utilizing the real time data, collected from the sensors, to stop deforestation and illegal poaching for preserving the wildlife.
• Monitoring the bees to study the ecosystem to prevent the loss of biodiversity.
• Automating the tasks to relieve the workers who work at the hazardous, polluted, inaccessible or uninhabitable places like underground mines, forests or mountainous areas, etc.
• It could be used for efficient farming by installing smart irrigation system and the mechanised systems for the optimized utilization of fertilizers to protect the crop growth according to the conditions of the soil.
• Introducing the autonomous electric cars would reduce the carbon emissions and the traffic.
• It can control the water management, waste management, developing and administering energy efficient smart cities, etc.

IoT in Industries (IIoT):

Industrial IoT (IIoT) is taking its shape in many industrial sectors that are enabling the companies to automate their businesses and provide the best possible consumer convenience. The use of IoT sensors such as proximity sensors, sensors to sense the pressure, heat, temperature, motion, light, sound etc., are already in place in the industries.

The industries across the sectors would encourage the universities to restructure the skillsets and add up new skills into the curriculum, according to the industrial developments. This would directly impact the workforce and employability quotient of the country. It would reduce the skill gaps and the attrition rates.

The combination of IIoT with augment reality, Big Data, Cloud/edge computing, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, machine learning, and trained collaborative robots would drastically:

• Increase the operational efficiency of the business,
• Optimize the production and supply chain management,
• Reduce the troubleshooting time of equipment failures from days to hours,
• Market the products/services faster,
• Eventually increase the business revenues and global GDP,
• Gain accurate insights from consumers and at the same time, provide them quality products and services,
• Easy accessibility and availability of IoT to the consumers for remote monitoring and controlling of the connected devices automatically.

The more availability of the data through technologies, the more will be the supply circulating in the market. This surge in the supply would reduce the retail prices of goods/services. The more the data collection is accurate; the reduced are the costs of production and the errors in the inventory.

With many IoT platform vendors, IoT can be seen in marketing campaigns, manufacturing and retail industry, aviation industry, agriculturing etc. In all of these industries, the IoT data is mainly used to implement:

• The predictive maintenance that builds an efficient monitoring and tracking systems, like drones, for early detection of mishaps,
• Thorough inspection and repair at the shop floor, that prevents it from getting into production floor,
• Planning and restructuring the organization for implementation of IIoT and improve the employee relationships internally and externally,
• Make best use of the data analytics insights to improve on the quality and to cut down on the delays related to delivering the projects or order fulfilment, etc.

Bottom line: IoT is trending in 2018 and has begun to impact many industrial sectors. The biggest advantage of these emerging IoT trends is that these are overlapping with each other and are converging. Therefore, it has opened up a realm of possibilities for the businesses and the individuals. There are many people from different disciplines and various organizations who are working together, to innovate and integrate the technologies with IoT, and to turn the possibility of making the Earth greener, into a reality. However, to realize this reality, these people have to overcome a lot of limitations with respect to the security, data management, infrastructure and above all, the consumption of electricity and the geographical boundary. In addition, the industries which are implementing the standards and policies for IoT implementation must also make the consumers aware of all the possible risks that could arise of the misuse of the IoT technology.

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