[Term of the Day]: IoT
Term of the Day
“Internet of Things”
Definition — What is IoT and it does?
The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the rapidly flourishing technologies. It extends internet connectivity beyond traditional devices like desktop and laptop computers, smartphones and tablets to a diverse range of devices such as smart homes, cars, security systems, thermostats, electronic appliances, alarm clocks, speaker systems, vending machines and so on. IoT enables users to interact with devices remotely by utilizing embedded technology to communicate and interact with the external environment, all via the Internet.
As per a report by Gartner, it is predicted that 95% of the electronic products will include IoT features. As far as the reach of the IoT, there are more than 20 billion devices that can currently connect to the Internet, and researchers at IDC estimate that by 2020 there will be 26 times more connected things than people.
IoT Enablers:
Smart networks: (ex: mesh topology).
Sensors: devices that are able to detect changes in an environment (ex: motion detectors).
RFIDs: uses radio waves in order to electronically track the tags attached to each physical object.
Nanotechnology: as the name suggests, these are extremely small devices with dimensions usually less than a hundred nanometers.
IoT along with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML):
IoT enabled devices accumulate an immeasurable amount of data, once your device gathers data, it needs someone to make sense of that data.
Here, ML and AI come to the rescue. Tesla self-drive cars is one such case where IoT and AI come together to save the world. It will soon become unusual to find an IoT project that doesn’t use AI. This makes learning Machine Laerning and Artificial Intelligence in the initial stages a big advantage.