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Technology

IoT (Internet of Things)

Waldeilson Santos•2021-01-07

Understand what IoT is, and what it changes in your life.

IoT (Internet of Things) is an area that has been gaining more and more prominence. For example, it is expected that IoT devices will generate around 80 ZB of data in 2025 alone. This scenario creates many possibilities for applying data analysis and artificial intelligence techniques.

But what is IoT, after all?

According to the International Telecommunication Union, IoT is a global infrastructure that enables the development and operation of advanced services through the interconnectivity of things.

Similarly, the IoT Agenda website defines IoT as a system of computing devices, mechanical or digital machines, objects, and even people and animals to which we can assign a unique identifier, and that have the ability to transmit data over the network without requiring human intervention.

And the things, what are they?

Things are physical or virtual entities that can be integrated into communication networks and can be uniquely identified. Examples: a person, an animal, a refrigerator.

Devices

IoT has several devices that are responsible for bringing things to life; they are responsible for capturing information about the environment, storing and processing data, and transforming the environment. Below we will see more details about the main IoT devices.

Sensors: devices that collect data from the environment, functioning as translators that transform a signal from the physical world into a digital signal. Examples: temperature, pressure, humidity, ultrasound, infrared, heart rate, blood pressure sensors, and so on.

Actuators: devices that work in the opposite way to sensors, as they can transform a digital signal into an action in the physical world. Examples of actuators: robots, motors, hydraulic actuators, pneumatic actuators, speakers.

RFID (Radio-frequency identification): RFID is the use of devices for identification by radio frequency. This technology was developed during World War II to allow rapid identification of friendly planes and bombers, and works by using electromagnetic waves to access data stored in a microchip attached to an antenna, allowing automatic identification of the objects it is attached to. Application examples: manufacturing, logistics, distribution, retail, toll plazas.

Smartphones: the devices we are most familiar with. They have several sensors and actuators, such as accelerometer, GPS, microphone, camera, speaker, some even have pressure and heart rate sensors, and are also capable of transmitting, storing, and processing data.

IoT Challenges

Security: this is one of the main challenges when it comes to IoT, as devices have limited resources, which restricts the application of more security layers and protocols. Moreover, there is a lack of standardization among manufacturers.

Energy: another constant challenge is related to the battery of IoT devices, as low durability or high cost can compromise the viability of a project, not to mention the environmental issue of these batteries. To address this, the industry has been trying to develop more and more battery-less devices, that is, devices that do not require batteries.

Conclusion

IoT is an area that is growing more and more, and the current trend is for increasing adoption of technologies in this area. This will bring great advances to humanity, as more efficient data collection and processing enables the application of artificial intelligence to improve various areas, such as medicine, logistics, manufacturing, entertainment, and even routines in our daily lives.

References