What Is AIoT And Why Should We Care?
An ever-increasing number of devices we use every single day are becoming “smart”. First, there were smartphones, then smartwatches followed, and now we have a myriad of “smart” devices, from socks and shoes to flower pots and doorbells. Computers, it seems, are everywhere today, even in our appliances. Interconnecting them via the internet is the next step – thus the Internet of Things was born.
At the same time, humanity is building increasingly intelligent software. Smart software – artificial intelligence, while not in the literal sense of the world – is emerging everywhere from banking to healthcare, destroying jobs according to some, bringing on a new era of prosperity according to others. Innovative AI solutions are being rolled out as we speak.
And out of the combination of the two, AIoT emerges – Artificial Intelligence of Things.
What is AIoT?
The Internet of Things has some key capabilities: collecting data, storing it, processing it, analyzing it. Acting on it, in turn, is reserved for humans. Or better said “was” – adding artificial intelligence to the mix, researchers have taken this burden off the human operators’ shoulders. The Artificial Internet of Things will go beyond taking all the Big Data collected by the hordes of connected devices and finding correlations between them but act on its findings. It will become the brain inhabiting the network of electronic neurons represented by TVs, fridges, phones, and watches – all this without human intervention.
Where AIoT could/will be used?
In an article published in Forbes Magazine last December, contributor Bernard Marr has outlined a few practical uses for AIoT.
He described a shop with no use for human personnel – a camera system would identify the customers stepping inside the store, the computers would keep a record of their behavior and preferences, then use the collected data to make decisions on store operations, product placement, advertising, and such, based on the age, gender, and preferences of the people shopping there.
Another application for AIoT would be smart office buildings that adjust light and heating depending on the number of employees in a room, use cameras and facial recognition for access control, among others. But there’s more – he writes about fleet management with autonomous vehicles, delivery robots, and traffic monitoring as practical uses for the AI of Things.
AIoT in real life
The Artificial Intelligence of Things is a cutting-edge technology under development – but there are already a few initiatives to adopt it in real life. Singapore-based AIoT developer Envision Digital has recently landed a contract with Thailand’s energy company PTT to develop the first smart grid of the country at the Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology. It will integrate solar panels, energy storage systems, and charging stations in the campus with Envision’s own digital analytics software, and will help the PTT achieve its strategic objective for this year: zero emissions growth throughout the year. The smart grid should be completed and deployed before the end of the year.