IoT or the Internet of Things is in its most basic form any electronics enabled device that is accessible over a computer network. Like your toaster or fridge. It represents computation out in the physical world with the purpose of either improving our lives or serving some useful function. They can include anything from cameras, sensors, actuators or drones.
Agritech is a big adopter of IoT for the improvement of operational efficiencies. They use soil sensors to selectively treat areas as needed and reduce waste. Drones monitor crops and other conditions and embedded devices throughout the operations are involved in quality control and automation.
Smart cities use connected cameras and devices to optimise traffic light control, perform security surveillance, monitor water delivery and wastage, and for electricity metering and grid optimisation.
Establishments of every nature use temperature sensors, location trackers and defect detection devices for a myriad of purposes.
Machine Learning
ML is the training of computer algorithms on data in order to automate laborious tasks, perform human tasks with greater accuracy or efficiency, make predictions, or classify things with precision. It is often used in conjunction with IoT for all the aforementioned IoT applications.
Complex Event Processing
This is where things get interesting.
CEP analyses individual events to form a bigger picture about what might be taking place. For example, if cameras detect a crowd event, social media sentiment analysis detects an emotion event around a certain subject, and traffic sensors detect a vehicular flow anomaly event in the same area, then there’s probably something afoot, or it’s a predictor of something about to happen.
This is situational awareness and a powerful use of IoT.
Similarly such situational awareness is applied in healthcare settings involving for example, the elderly, to detect or predict accidents or medical situations from realtime behaviour monitoring and chemical analysis events.
All the above contributes to Ambient Intelligent Living (AML) applications of IoT, ML and CEP.
Drones and Robotics
When IoT feeds into physical actuators such as robots or drones then we gain automation, precision, optimisation and control.
Summary
So that’s the Internet of Things. Devices, networks and computers working together to improve the things we do.