The Internet of

ThingsBY: AMY TENG

DATE: 15-JUL-14

SOURCE: INTERNET, WIKIPEDIA, GOOGLE IMAGE

Early Definition

Today computers—and, therefore, the Internet—are almost wholly dependent on human beings for information. Nearly all of the roughly 50 petabytes (a petabyte is 1,024 terabytes) of data available on the Internet were first captured and created by human beings—by typing, pressing a record button, taking a digital picture, or scanning a bar code. Conventional diagrams of the Internet … leave out the most numerous and important routers of all - people. The problem is, people have limited time, attention and accuracy—all of which means they are not very good at capturing data about things in the real world. And that's a big deal. We're physical, and so is our environment … You can't eat bits, burn them to stay warm or put them in your gas tank. Ideas and information are important, but things matter much more. Yet today's information technology is so dependent on data originated by people that our computers know more about ideas than things. If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things—using data they gathered without any help from us—we would be able to track and count everything, and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling, and whether they were fresh or past their best. The Internet of Things has the potential to change the world, just as the Internet did. Maybe even more so.[17]

—Kevin Ashton, 'That 'Internet of Things' Thing', RFID Journal, July 22, 2009

What is Internet of Things (IoT)?

Also known as Cloud of Things (CoT)

Wikipedia: interconnection of uniquely identifiable embedded computing like devices with the existing internet infrastructure

In its original interpretation, one of the first consequences of implementing the Internet of Things by equipping all objects in the world with minuscule identifying devices or machine-readable identifiers would be to transform daily life in several positive ways.[23][24] 

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) was seen as a prerequisite for the Internet of Things in the early days. If all objects and people in daily life were equipped with identifiers, they could be managed and inventoried by computers.[19][20] Besides using RFID, the tagging of things may be achieved through such technologies as near field communication, barcodes, QR codes and digital watermarking.[21][22]

What is so special about IoT?

Advantage Instant and ceaseless inventory control would become ubiquitous

Explanation Person’s ability to interact with objects could be altered remotely based on immediate or present needs, in accordance with existing end-user agreements

Example Enables much more powerful control of content creators and owners over their creations by better application of copyright restrictions and digital restrictions management, so a customer buying a Blu-ray disc containing a movie could choose to pay a high price to be able to watch the movie for a whole year, pay a moderate price and have the right to watch the movie for a week, or pay a low fee every time she or he watches the movie.

Applications of IoT

1. Environmental Monitoring

2. Infrastructure Management

3. Industrial Applications

4. Energy Management

5. Medical and Healthcare Systems

6. Building and Home Automation

7. Transport Systems

8. Large Scale Deployments

Unique addressability of things

Original idea of Auto-ID Center is based on RFID-tags and unique identification through Electronic Product Code

However, this have evolved into objects having an IP address or URI (uniform resource identifier)

From Semantics Web POV, all things(not just electronic, smart, or RFID-enabled) addressable with existing naming protocols, such as URI is part of IoT.

Next Gen. IPv6.

More information of IoT ubiquitous addressability ideas in GSI/EPCglobal EPC Information Services (EPCIS) specifications

Trends and Characteristics

Trend and Characteristics

1. Intelligence Ambient intelligence and autonomous control

Embedded intelligence – leverage the capacity to collect and analyze the digital traces left by people when interacting with widely deployed smart things

2. Architecture Event-driven architecture

Actors are self-referenced, and only adapt to existing common standards if ever needed

Predicting everything would be no more than defining a “global finality” for everything that is just not possible with any of the current top-down approaches and standardizations

Sensor networks may be the most essential components of the IoT

Trend and Characteristics

3. Complex System Global finality can be settled for semi-open/closed loops (complex system)

Full open loop is a chaotic environment, not a system, since systems have always finality

4. Size considerations The Internet of objects, human beings surveyed in urban environments

each surrounded by 1000 to 5000 trackable objects

5. Time considerations IoT is made of billions of parallel and simultaneous events, time is no more

used as a common and linear dimension but will depend on each entity (object, process, information system, etc.).

IoT will be accordingly based on massive parallel IT systems (Parallel computing). See logical clocks.

Trend and Characteristics

6. Space considerations In IoT, the precise geographic location/dimension of a thing – will be critical

Currently mediated by humans whether to show or not the location in time and space

If in IoT, things are able to take actions on their own initiatives, this human-centric mediation role is eliminated, and the time-space context that we as humans take for granted must be given a central role in this information ecosystem.

Just as standards play a key role in the Internet and the Web, geospatial standards will play a key role in the IoT.

7. A Basket of Remotes Many IoT devices will appear in this huge market

“Basket of Remotes” problem – hundreds of applications to interface with hundreds of devices that don’t share protocols for speaking with one another

So, what is the Internet of Things?

Internet of Things will revolutionized IT

“Will it be more efficient to have dumb sensors that simply transmit all the data to a central server where a data warehouse can be built and then apply the analytical capabilities there, or will it make sense to put some intelligence at the periphery, in sensors, or nodes?”

Big Data Analytics will permeate IoT

 “smart vs. dumb endpoint” 

As the IoT takes shape, the notion of a totally “dumb” endpoint will become antiquated. Before long, it will be difficult to find any consumer, business, industrial or other device that totally lacks embedded, data-driven analytic intelligence. What’s driving this trend are the plummeting cost of solid-state storage, the inexorable miniaturization of electronic components, and the embedding of deeper analytic libraries in every device.

SMART PLANET