Rise of the Machines - the Internet of Big Things

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Tuesday, May 4. 2010

Rise of the Machines - the Internet of Big Things




Tonight is Mashup's "Internet of Things" session - I thought I would add my 2p worth upfront of this with this post on something that often gets forgotten in IOT discussions, to wit "big things". So much of the IOT discussion focusses on "smart dust" and " a billion sensors" - wrongly, in our view as the economics of a lot of that is still marginal.

No, our research indicates that the first major "Internet of Things" participants will be big, expensive things that can easily justify the cost.

As an aside, we don't believe there will be the Elecronic Fridge, or Smart Kitchen, or Digital Home anytime soon. The costs are high, the benefits are poorly understood - and not that great, and the maintenance from the user and the ancillary systems required are still huge investments. The Digital House will have clusters first - around entertainment first (think IOT - TV), security and probably healthcare - but they will dstart off as point systems

No, we imagine that the IOT will be far more prosaic and will initially emerge to improve the efficiency of existing systems that are hitting bottlenecks, for example:

Trucking

Scheduling trucks efficiently to minimise wasted miles and wasted space is key. Also, ensuring that the return journeys can be filled with useful goods as much as possible.

Cars

"Smart" cars have many opportunities - self maintenance, simplification of all the 'Net comms their humans need, ability to synchronise with other cars, the roads, traffic warnings etc.

Industrial Plant

A major piece of PhHarmaceutical plant going down costs thousands of pounds a minute. That is serious cost justification for the IOT

Sensors to warn of disasters/dangers

There are alraedy buoys in teh ocean now to pick up Tsunamis, we syspect that nEarthquake monitors, Avalanche monitors etc will soon be up - anywhere where human - especially toursist human - life is threatened will see these devices as the business case is clear

Military Hardware

Everything above is relevant to military gear, plus it needs to be:

- Massively Redundant - you need to assume large bits of it are taken out
- Case Hardened - other people shoot at it
- Simple to install and maintain - fiddly stuff won't last in the field

What seems obvious to us is that the IOT will come about to allow "smart group" behaviours in military gear. If you can build drone planes you can build drone tanks and so on. The military has been pushing airborne drone and bomb disposal equipment, but as the video shows other forms of robot soldier are emerging - and a major benefit of the IOT is to co-ordinate groups of such devices.

.....which of course brings us on to....

Robotics.


Commercial and consumer robots are expensive enough to justify their own onboard IOT, in fact a lot of industrial robots already to have their own IOT in localised forms. The more interesting question is what will happen with the emerging launch of mobile robots over the next few years - if a BOt can take its cues from outside data (eg GPS) its a whole lot easier to build the relvant onboard capabiolity as it needs less brainpower, less power and thus less weight.

Posted by Alan Patrick in Robotics at 16:30 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
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