By 2020, 50 billion of our devices will be connected to each other and the cloud, changing our lives at home, work, school and play. Here’s 7 areas of your life that will be impacted.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the combination of sensors, cloud technology, artificial intelligence and analytics that will allow us to work and live better. If you work in the Information Technology field then you may be directly involved in the process to collect, analyze and make decisions using the data or in helping creating or supporting the very large software/hardware/platforms to deliver the service.
7 Ways IoT will Impact Daily Life
1. Home/Office
Perhaps the Nest thermostat from Google is one of the more known entries into the home IoT market. Nest can adapt to the living habits of the people as well as the equipment used for cooling and heating to determine the optimal settings for both comfort and savings. In the future this will evolve into cooling/heating the space where we spend most of our time and not wasting it on rooms we hardly use. The same optimisation can be done for lighting and water usage. Appliances such as washer/dryers can run during non-peak electricity usage times. Refrigerators can alert you when you need to buy more as it’s used. Gas leaks and smoke alerts can be sent to mobile devices. Maintenance needs can be alerted before it’s too late avoiding costly repairs. The office can incorporate many of the same energy saving IoT as the home. Some more novel uses of IoT could be to determine which parts of the office are being used such conference rooms or to determine if certain groups or departments should be located closer together.
2. Industrial
Increasing operational efficiency is the primary objective of using IoT in the Industrial sector. Using IoT for predictive maintenance can reduce maintenance costs by 30% and breakdowns by 70%. Water utilities are using sensors on pipes to detect and fix leaks. Leaks and ageing pipes in the US lose 2.1 trillion gallons of water annually providing a huge opportunity for savings as water becomes more of a precious resource. GE is using sensors in airplane parts and engines to better maintain planes and have more available to optimise utilisation and minimise airline delays.
Apache Corporation, an oil and gas exploration company is using IoT to help customers predict when oil pump failures will happen. Just reducing these failures by 1 % for the global oil industry would add $ 19 Billion more output per year. Michelin is using sensors in tires to gain insight to help truck fleet manager reduce fuel consumption.
3. Logistics
Logistics companies were among the first user of IoT, with drivers using the hand held scanners providing real time delivery notification. Today we get deliver notification on our mobile device so the door bell doesn’t even have to be rung anymore. In warehouse operations, IoT, is being used to ensure correct receipt of goods and optimised put away so space and eventual picking is optimised. In addition, IoT has greatly improved safety by providing alerts when machine and people come into close proximity. To alert when a pallet is not properly loaded where falling goods may cause injury or damage product. Wearable devices can help detect exhaustion and fatigue.
4. Cities/Infrastructure
Bridges collapsing like the Minneapolis I-35 one, dams breaking, gas leaks like the recent California one relocating 700 families seem to be regular events. Costly and time consuming manual inspections are very limiting. In this area IoT can provide sensors that collect information that can be used to predict maintenance needs before such devastating events occur. IoT will provide many other improvements for city living.
5. Cars
The self driving car may be the ultimate IoT device reshaping how we use and own cars. Even today human driven cars are using IoT for navigation, safety and infotainment. One example, currently happening is the use of sensors on street parking spots that will guide potential users to the location without having to go through the endless street by street search. On the safety side there are a few developments already or close to reality:
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Forward Collision Avoidance – The systems use forward-facing sensors — which can be radar-, camera- or laser-based — to detect imminent collisions and either apply or increase braking force to compensate for slow or insufficient driver reactions.
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Lane Detection – cameras can be used to alert drivers when they begin to go off lane in an uncontrolled manner even taking over steering if pattern continuous.
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Vehicle to Vehicle Communication – this will be a requirement for self driving cars in mass but even human driven vehicles can use alerts when other cars are to near or moving near in non controlled manner.
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Pedestrian Detection – About 4000 deaths and over 50,000 injuries to pedestrians are caused by vehicles. Cars can detect pedestrians in the path and automatically apply brakes.
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Self Parking – Self parking has been around for some time but now drivers will be able to park after getting out of the vehicle, where the car will park, shut off and lock.
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Software Download – As the car is becoming more of a hardware device for software the ability to download, upgrade and fix without taking the car for service is critical. Tesla has already started downloading autonomous driving capabilities via internet.
6. Healthcare
Personal fit devices have been around for some time but they are advancing by collecting more data and being connected to the internet to share and communicate information. These devices can do the following:
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Continuous glucose
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Blood pressure
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EKG
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Hydration
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Ingestion
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Infant care
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Oxygen level
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Posture
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Eye tracking
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Brain activity
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Radiation exposure
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Pain relief
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Respiration
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Sleep
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Skin conductance
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Temperature
The large data set could reveal patterns and correlations regarding our health that expensive small sample studies presently cannot. Hospitals are just beginning to take advantage of these technologies. Hospital stays that involve monitoring can be potentially done at home using IoT devices providing a more comfortable and less expensive alternative. IoT can be used to monitor medication usage to alert when a person forgets and may not take what they need or exceed what they should take.
7. IT
IoT will be a huge impact on IT from both as user and provider. Much of the user coincides with what’s highlighted above. From the provider side, Gartner, has identified the following:
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Security — The increasing digitisation and automation of the multitudes of devices deployed across different areas of modern urban environments are set to create new security challenges to many industries.
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Enterprise — Significant security challenges will remain as the big data created as a result of the deployment of myriad devices will drastically increase security complexity. This, in turn, will have an impact on availability requirements, which are also expected to increase, putting real-time business processes and, potentially, personal safety at risk.
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Consumer Privacy — As is already the case with smart metering equipment and increasingly digitised automobiles, there will be a vast amount of data providing information on users’ personal use of devices that, if not secured, can give rise to breaches of privacy. This is particularly challenging as the information generated by IoT is a key to bringing better services and the management of such devices.
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Data — The impact of the IoT on storage is two-pronged in types of data to be stored: personal data (consumer-driven) and big data (enterprise-driven). As consumers utilise apps and devices continue to learn about the user, significant data will be generated.
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Storage Management — The impact of the IoT on storage infrastructure is another factor contributing to the increasing demand for more storage capacity, and one that will have to be addressed as this data becomes more prevalent. The focus today must be on storage capacity, as well as whether or not the business can harvest and use IoT data in a cost-effective manner.
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Server Technologies — The impact of IoT on the server market will be largely focused on increased investment in key vertical industries and organisations related to those industries where IoT can be profitable or add significant value.
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Data Center Network — Existing data center WAN links are sized for the moderate-bandwidth requirements generated by human interactions with applications. IoT promises to dramatically change these patterns by transferring massive amounts of small message sensor data to the data center for processing, dramatically increasing inbound data center bandwidth requirements.