In his column this month, Jim Pinto predicts that the Internet of Things (IoT) will be instrumental in transforming the next decade. He and his fellow futurists believe that intelligent networks will take sensory-based automation to the next level, with dramatic improvements in production efficiency and an impact in almost all other areas of our lives as well.
This prediction resonated with another article we have in this issue, to the extent that I decided to do some further research on the subject. The second article is by Jean-Pascal Tricoire, chairman & CEO of Schneider Electric, who predicts the convergence of information technology and energy. His belief is that the combination of IT software with smart electrical devices will provide energy customers with the real-time information they need to implement active energy efficiency strategies. The general idea is that the smart devices in our homes will be able to advise us about when it is most cost effective to consume our energy, based on pricing information conveyed from the utility over a smart grid.
According to Cisko’s Dave Evans, IoT should really be referred to as the Internet of Objects, and according to the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group; IoT is simply the point in time at which more objects are connected to the Internet than people.
Evans says that once we cross this threshold, a window of opportunity opens for the creation of ever more sophisticated applications in the area of machine-to-machine communication.
It seems though that not all the benefits will come about through m-to-m communication, but in fact, many will accrue from machine-to-human interaction. In a world dominated by gloomy headlines that tell of rolling blackouts, economic stagnation and ever more brutal atrocities, I thought it would be fun to share some of the positive ways that the IoT’s infinite capacity for innovation and imagination could touch us in the future.
Here are some of the more ingenious ideas I came across:
1. GlowCaps: GlowCaps use light, sound, and even text notifications to remind you when to take your medication. And, when it is time for a refill, this is as easy as pushing the button at the base of the GlowCap which then sends a refill request to your pharmacy of choice. (Remembering to take your meds just became a whole lot easier.)
2. BiKN: Keys are easy to lose, that is just the simple truth. But now, thanks to wireless key locator apps like BiKN, their location is easily tracked. By attaching a sensory tag to your keys you can locate them from your smartphone at distances of anything up to 50 metres away. (Just like that your keys are robbed of their uncanny ability to simply get up and disappear.)
3. Parksight 2.0: Parksight 2.0 changes parking lot scramble from a free-for-all guessing game to a cut-and-dry GPS app. Parking lot sensors identify the presence of a vehicle and relay the information to the cloud. Information is then sent back to the vehicle, pinpointing all the open spots in its vicinity. (Presumably you will still need your steely resolve in the event that you converge on the same space at the same time as the driver of another vehicle who received the same information.)
4. SmartHelmet: You’re out for an easy 100 km Sunday morning ride, but it was raining the night before and the roads are slick. You take a corner a little too fast and your bike slips out from under you. You hit your head and lie unconscious and by yourself, 30 km from home. The accelerometer in your helmet has detected that you have hit your head hard and sounds an alarm. If it is not deactivated within a certain time, it then sends your exact location to an ambulance and any other emergency contacts you have pre-listed. (Apparently there is no reason why it cannot also send a signal to the sign 1 km down the road which will then warn approaching motorists to slow down.)
Perhaps though, one of the niftiest IoT applications for us inhabitants of Africa will come from the latest studies into neuro-technology evolution. Researchers in the US are working on the next generation of MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) sensors for brain wave pattern recognition. What they hope is that the technology will assist investigators to determine when a suspect is telling the truth or lying. It should be interesting to see how well some of our continent’s civil servants and political leaders hold up under this kind of scrutiny from the things on our Internet.
I hope you enjoy this issue.
Steven Meyer
Editor: SA Instrumentation & Control
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