The Internet of Things (IoT) is a pretty big deal, something you’d love to a) know more about and b) get in on.
In this podcast, co-host Ben Dolmar, Mobile Technology Manager at The Nerdery, interviewed Peggy Emerson from Intel about just that. Emerson belongs to a sales group within Intel focusing on industrial applications of IoT.
Hint: She has a lot to say about why IoT matters and how, especially, it can matter to entrepreneurs who want to get equipped with IoT strategies and explore what’s possible through technology.
In discussing IoT challenges, the first thing is trying to explain just what, exactly, IoT really is in a way that’s useful. Emerson names four important components of IoT.
So what exactly is IoT?
Sensing
Say you’ve got an object just sitting somewhere - like a stamping metal machine to give an industrial example — it’s an unconnected thing that might be full of needful data. The sensing part of IoT would be adding a sensor to pull data out of the object, to collect data out of a machine.
Communicating
Obviously, the data is no good unless it gets sent somewhere useful. In Emerson’s example, the data from the stamping metal machine might get sent to Intel solutions or an analytics partner — but it might not get sent in totality. Sometimes, IoT analysis can occur concurrently with communication. How? Read on.
Analyzing
Not every bit of data is important, which is why the current trend in IoT is to do analysis at the edge (at the device or machine). “The reason you analyze data on the edge is to determine what you actually need to send,” Emerson explained. “Instead of seeing a whole graph, you’d send the equivalent of a text message.”
If you’re communicating data from an oil well out in the middle of nowhere, it isn’t important to know every piece of data every second. Plus, it could be quite costly to send all that data, especially by satellite. IoT analysis involves interpreting raw data to extract the valuable parts, Emerson points out — and it’s often useful to start on that early so the more elaborate analyses don’t have to start by weeding out the irrelevant.
Side note about big data: Intel relies on partners for application development and analytics, often specific to the industry, such as oil and gas or manufacturing. These partners can also provide platforms so the data can be interpreted and analyzed.
Thus, there’s no need to run up the budget by sending every scrap of data out of an excess of caution, particularly if sensors already know what constitutes “important” data for a given industry. Not to mention that over sending data is expensive.
Acting
Acting on the data is also an important part of IoT — and it might end up looking like responding to a piece of data in person or remotely controlling a machine or other object in light of the data.
Safety in the manufacturing environment is key, so it’s one thing to pull the data. But the goal is to be able to have a closed loop of data, Emerson said, in which sensing leads seamlessly to acting and cycles around again.
What you can do with IoT
It isn’t enough to understand the process of IoT unless you have the vision to see what to do with it all. The idea of a closed loop of data is just the beginning of what IoT can do — and what you can do with it.
A quick cautionary note. Interconnectivity can raise some security concerns or unintended consequences. (Think of those guys who hacked an automobile last year.)
Now, Intel has invested in hardware processors that have crypto in the processor, so it obviously cares about security. From a software standpoint, McAfee and other Intel holdings have solutions related to security.
“We don’t make everything, we enable partners,” Emerson said, and some of these partners are specifically focused on security.
That’s why Intel gives away security solutions, such as EPID (Enhanced Privacy ID), which allows devices (e.g. thermostats) to send data anonymously. Say you don’t want someone to know your particular thermostat data, but they still need data on whether an item in a trusted group is having an issue. Use an EPID.
Interconnectivity
Bringing objects online isn’t the end of the story in IoT. Intel donated EPID to IoT standards bodies like the Open Connectivity Foundation in order to facility interconnectivity.
“The goal of IoT is to create interoperable solutions,” Emerson points out. (Interoperable devices always means a better user experience.)
So, two vendors that are competitors might have similar products that can’t talk to each other because they’re layered in a mire of incompatible software. The idea behind EPID is to have testbeds so competitors can sit side by side with the same technical goals in mind and test for the end user experience to be better.
It does eventually come down to chips, even Intel’s IoT platform.
Imagine you’re reading left to right, with the edge — that is, the things — on the left and the cloud on the right. Intel has assets everywhere in between, and these are often E-chips and processors. Because on the far left at the edge, there’s a sensor somewhere taking data. And on your way towards the right, there’s a gateway of some kind, whether it’s simply aggregating data and sending it on or it’s a “heavy lifting” machine like a server learning and determining trends.
“A chip has a little of everything,” Emerson said. A chip, after all, was developed for a consumer device like a phone or tablet. “The IOT group looks at all the things that Intel has made for consumer devices to reuse and adopt them for long life in IOT applications.”
Technology uses
Then what do IoT applications look like in real life? (They look awesome is how they look.)
Take the DAQRI Smart Helmet, which is literally an augmented reality helmet. It gives you x-ray eyes, like in every science fiction tale from the 1950s. No, really, it’s a high level processing sensor that has Intel Real Sense, a 3D camera, and thermal imaging. It’s an object that’s connected to the cloud — sensing, communicating, analyzing and acting all at once.
In an industrial application, the augmented reality helmets could help a worker investigate broken pipelines, overlay a map of problem areas, and order new pipes or valves or anything. Workers physically wearing IoT solutions can act efficiently to resolve things right away.
“We really feel that industrial is one of the key areas in IoT,” Emerson said, as much opportunity in IoT in industrial space as in commercial space.
The scale of the market is such that Emerson’s team recently reorganized to be focused on vertical areas. The opportunity is in the number of devices that are out there in the industrial sector yet to be connected.
IoT is just too huge not to be a part of.
Contact Peggy Emerson via LinkedIn or email her at peggy.emerson@intel.com. Ben Dolmar can be reached at ben.dolmar@nerdery.com.
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