Can you say, without giving them much thought, how many objects connected to the Internet you used today? Probably not, and do not try to count them: we are almost certain that there dimentichereste more than one.
You have stamped the ticket on public transport? In many cities, also Italian, the ticket machines are
connected to the network to allow transport companies to monitor in real time the flow of passengers on the routes and program so the more efficient use of resources and personnel.
And if you have been drinking coffee at the bar is possible that the machine used by the bartender to make you express it were connected to the Internet in this way those involved in the maintenance knows when it is time to take action without waiting for a failure.
THINGS IN NETWORK. According to McKinsey in 2015 the objects connected to the Net were more than 5 billion and will be 28 by 2025. For the most mobile phones, but also bracelets for monitoring of sleep and fitness, home appliances, automobiles, industrial equipment, medical devices and much even more.
It is the Internet of Things, or the Internet of things, the set of objects and sensors that use the Internet to communicate something, that data, to something else: a database, a computer or other object connected.
If you think, then, that the Internet of Things is something that only the big companies in Silicon Valley, you are out: the network of connected objects is something that impacts already on the lives of all of us, even though they often do not realize it, and that in the coming years is likely to profoundly transform many aspects of the economy and our daily lives.
A BIT OF HISTORY. The term Internet of Things is in common usage for a couple of years, but it appeared for the first time in 1999 in a presentation by Kevin Ashton, a researcher at MIT, at Procter & Gamble. Ashton was working with colleagues to RFID tags, special electronic tags that could be applied more or less everywhere, and that could be read remotely with special radios.
Nearly 20 years after those tags have become sensors able to read from the environment the most diverse information, from the movement to the temperature, from the GPS position to the weight, moisture from the chemical composition of the soil, and to transmit them anywhere in the world using protocols and infrastructure of the Internet.
INTERNET IS EVERYWHERE. The areas of Internet of Things applications are potentially infinite: from smart home, smart homes that govern alone temperature and lighting according to external conditions, to cars that communicate in real time with the road and the other cars to avoid accidents and optimize consumption and paths.
From medicine, with pacemakers and other devices capable of alerting directly for help if the wearer feels bad, agriculture, with sensors plunged into the ground that indicate composition and soil moisture to the system that delivers water and fertilizers.
The only limit in short, seems to be fantasy: any object, provided that we are connected to the network and to communicate something to someone, may fall under this definition. Even the bowl of cat, provided it is equipped with a sensor to communicate, for example, if the cat has finished his ration of gruel.
In general, the McKinsey analysts identify three major areas of application of the Internet of Things.
OPTIMIZATION OF PROCESS. Many industry players have added hundreds or thousands of sensors in their supply chains in order to find out what happens in the various stages of processing. These probes provide data relating to thousands of physical, chemical and environmental conditions that allow experts to intervene in real time to change, for example, the composition of a mixture or the baking temperature of a food. Or they can send information on the measures of each piece produced in order to eliminate any damaged and have a quality that approaches 100%.
OPTIMIZATION OF RESOURCES. The data collected from these sensor networks can also serve to optimize the use of scarce resources such as water or energy. Why watering a garden or a field if the weather forecast says it will rain today? Just connect the solenoid valve which opens and closes the water to a feed that receives the weather forecast for that specific area and to a series of sensors which measure the soil moisture.
COMPLEX SYSTEMS SELF. The most interesting applications IoT, however, pertain to systems that can automatically respond in real time to the modification of non-predictable conditions, for example the vehicle in a city traffic.
These systems mimic human decision-making, but they do it much more quickly and providing a much greater amount of data. They work this way the automatic guidance system of the cars that control entire fleets of vehicles without driver on long stretches of road constantly communicating with each other to prevent accidents or traffic jams.
BIG, BIG, DATE. The Internet of Things is in fact a network of billions of sensors and gauges that constantly listening to what is happening in the external environment: our body, an industrial plant, a washing machine or a street lamp.
The collected data is stored in large databases, and then processed with the help of big data, supercomputers capable of analyzing quickly large amounts of data looking for repeating patterns, anomalies, deviations from standards and other statistically significant aspects.
A.I. - ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. According to Harriet Green, Global Head of IBM Watson IoT, in the next few years the Internet of Things will become the main source of data on the entire planet. Understanding this data and turn them into usable information will be the task of artificial intelligence and cognitive computing systems such as Watson, developed by IBM.
Watson uses machine learning and other techniques to help automate tasks, allow manufacturers to build better products and introduce new services in particular in the home.
Cognitive technologies also allow Watson and other digital brains to simplify and improve the vocal interaction with things that surround us. An example is the Echo, the Amazon microphone that connects to the Wi-Fi at home, and to which you can simply order talking about all the products in the company catalog of e-commerce.
THE MARKET. In the coming years the Internet of Things is expected to grow also in terms of economic value. According to McKinsey (Mapping the value beyond the hype) in 2015 the IoT market was worth about 655 billion dollars, destined to be 11,000 by 2025. This means that within 10 years this sector will be worth approximately 11% of ' entire world economy.
4 trillion will come from the world of plants, 1,700 from the cities that will be more intelligent and environmentally friendly, the other 1600 applications for health and fitness and 1,000 from automation of retail.
Another interesting aspect of what is defined as the fourth industrial revolution is that 90% of the economic value created dall'IoT will be captured by the users: 60% will be allocated to the industrialized countries, but the remaining 40% will help the economies of the countries in Developing.
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