How Industrial Internet of Things Is Shaking Off Hype and Getting Real

The world is starting to have a greater understanding of the industrial internet of things because a growing number of industries—such as manufacturing, agriculture and logistics—are implementing new IT to make themselves more connected. With more companies such as GE, Comcast, AT&T and Honeywell adopting an IoT approach, the concept of living in an integrated world is moving swiftly from hype to reality. As industrial IoT adoption increases through the use of APIs and microservices, use cases will become more unique—the sky’s the limit when it comes to how our world can connect. This eWEEK slide show, using industry information from Built.io, explains how we will experience a more connected way of life in the near future—and in ways you might not expect.

Many farming techniques haven’t changed in decades. By combining technology including sensors, smarter hardware and predictive modeling, it is possible to jump-start a farming revolution, decrease costs, increase output and support the next billion people on the planet. Read this case study with Agralogics, dubbed the “Internet of Food,” to see how this works today: https://www.built.io/case-studies/ipaas/agralogics

Air quality continues to be an issue as nations industrialize, but sensors are affordable and enable government agencies and private organizations to track and monitor in real time while improving with actionable data. This could be done throughout a city, and, if a particular area is polluting more than another, energy prices could be adjusted to incentivize citizens to use public transit or walk to work.

Airports could utilize beacons to deliver gate information and flight updates in real time to specific groups of passengers based on location and flight status. This can be used to automatically provide passengers with updates and estimated transit times from anywhere in the airport. Additionally, airports could implement navigation (wayfinding) technology to provide ultra-local directions that are relevant to each passenger. This would allow airports to move passengers through terminals more efficiently and provide added value for retailers. By the way, Miami International Airport is the first airport in the world to fully deploy beacon technology.

On a unified “smart grid” system, a city can provide a holistic approach to monitoring and identifying issues in real time and adjust its infrastructure and utilities while providing maintenance to manage issues quickly. For example, if a row of street lights is out, people will be less likely to park on that street and demand for parking spaces will increase elsewhere in the city. A connected city can respond by adjusting parking prices and traffic light patterns while sending a ticket to maintenance.

Smart grids, smart batteries (such as Tesla’s) and predictive analytics will allow for a new future with an abundance of power for electric vehicles and more. Rather than increase our energy output, we can build efficiencies in storage, management and consumption to avoid an energy shortage.

The dream of health-care systems is a holistic view of a patient, complete with their entire medical history, medication and analysis of this data no matter where they go for treatment. To achieve this, legacy systems and new technologies need to communicate data between them via an iPaaS (integration platform as a service) while providing the flexibility to try new systems without long deployment timelines and massive technological debt. Looking to the future, this coupled with more data and predictive analytics will allow for early diagnosis, better studies, better reporting and improvements in every facet of health care.

Companies monitoring a large fleet of delivery vehicles (such as UPS) should consider using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze factors that include delivery timelines, speed, the cost of fuel, fuel efficiency, weather and fleet maintenance to determine the best speed at which they should send their trucks. 

If every machine, connector or sensor in a factory is connected to another, manufacturers can move toward a continuous creation/management cycle in which they can diagnose problems before they happen to avoid lapses in productivity and production.

A supply chain system without a digital touch is actually pretty easy to break, since there are so many resources that go into moving a product or service from supplier to customer. So suppliers could automate production runs for parts that are replaceable based on the age of machines and the maintenance schedule for each.

We’re all focused on self-driving cars and trucks, but the future of transportation and IoT is more than just moving people or your Amazon purchases. As fully autonomous transportation systems come online, we’ll be able to reduce traffic and accidents and change the entire way that we move things.

Physical security continues to trouble both the private and public sector. You could use AI to aggregate and analyze previous threats, then apply that system to real-time data. If someone walks in with a backpack and performs a set of actions, you could then make better, informed decisions about how to act. A smart security system coupled with sensors to detect certain substances (like radioactivity) and Bluetooth beacons could be used to triangulate potential threats in real time for public spaces or buildings.