The term IoT or Internet of Things is no longer tech-speak in the latter half of 2019. It has acquired a social dimension to itself with more and more people, not all of them necessarily technically very savvy, beginning to realize that IoT is going to play an increasingly important part in their daily lives.
They are even beginning to rue its presence a little as evidenced by the many funny anecdotes we hear about the various digital assistants performing in very unintended ways. From Alexa creepily laughing for no apparent reason at all to it sending people’s recorded private conversation to some other user, there have been questions raised about their very desirability.
That being stated, there seems to be a gradual realization that IoT and the various devices it empowers are soon going to be as ubiquitous as smartphones. Let us take a look at the various uses to which IoT is going to be put soon:
Industrial Applications
IoT is largely talked about in the context of how it impacts us personally what with all that talk about autonomous smart homes taking decisions for us. But it is in its industrial application that IoT might show its true worth. A digitally connected factory, for instance, can use IoT to transmit real-time operations information to an operations manager at another location. This will lead to a far more efficient monitoring and resolution of operations-related issues than is currently possible.
Inventory can similarly be globally tracked right across the entire supply chain. Another area of use would be smart packaging. Products embedded with sensors can transmit data about their condition while in transit. This will one to improve and enhance the quality of the product and its packaging.
There is a buzz developing around IoRT or the Internet of Robotic Things that will empower one to measure a robot’s performance over an industrial cycle. Enabling advanced robotic capabilities by the linking of robotic things (sic) is achieved by leveraging the power of communication technologies like cloud computing and cloud storage. This allows the robots to have access to powerful computation resources, which does away with the necessity of costly updates and maintenance. This imparts tremendous flexibility to networked robotics to ideally apportion shared computational resources and enhance their output exponentially.
Smart Cities Galore
Going forward, it won’t just be people and industries that will increasingly rely on IoT devices to enhance efficiency and make things easy for themselves- whole cities will turn to it to make things run better. Cities will be able to collect, collate and leverage data with the help of cabs, public kiosks, surveillance video cameras, and any other form of gadgetry with a public interface.
This will help towns and cities optimally deploy and utilize resources and be able to reach vital services to people in the best possible manner. This will effectively solve many of the typical problems faced by urban centers around the world-traffic snarls, power shortages, poor access to educations and healthcare centers and so on.
5G Networks to Power IoT
With more and more nations making the rollout of 5G telecom networks, the IoT will truly come into its own. This is because the greater speed provided by these networks will make it possible to connect devices across the board like never before.
Faster internet speed will make it possible for the data collected by the myriad devices to be interpreted faster and better. This will provide a fillip to the creation of new and innovative IoT products that will increasingly find their way into our daily lives.
Auto Industry Reboot
IoT deployment aided by lightning-fast 5G networks will revolutionize the auto industry as we know it today. Driverless vehicles aided by greater interconnectedness and will come into their own in the coming years. People will come to believe in the concept like never before and driver-less automobiles will become increasingly ubiquitous.
The Way IoT is Headed
One can gauge future trends concerning the universal adoption of IoT by the following facts:
1. The number of IoT enabled devices in the world will touch a whopping 20 billion by 2020.
2. Total investment by business in IoT by 2021 is estimated at a gargantuan $6 trillion by 2021.
3. By some estimates, one can look forward to an addition of $15 trillion
Vipin Labroo
