Why IoT leads in Industrial Automation by Beata Szabina Herskovics

Author: Beata Szabina Herskovics

Why IoT leads in Industrial Automation IoT (Internet of things) is not just a buzzword, which by the way dominates our world, but also a real game-changer in industrial technology. By revolutionizing Industry 4.0, IoT became exceptional problem solvers, quick operation improvers and effective productivity boosters.

What is IoT? IoT simplifies data sharing between the internet-connected things or devices with the assistance of the built-in sensors, without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. Using an Internet Protocol (IP) address, IoT is able to transfer data over a network (radio waves or wifi). IoT already has a huge impact on residential usage as digital assistance, smart homes or personal healthcare solutions have changed our life over the past years. By 2020 there will be 31 billion devices associated with the Internet of Things.

IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) While IoT is utilized in industrial sectors called IIoT (Industrial Internet of things) also provides improving profitability and effectiveness by running higher-performance processors, sensors, analytic software, vision systems, cloud computing, new communications (wireless & protocols) and highly distributed system architectures, among many other products. IoT is developed by the military to reduce danger and predict future situations by real-time data analysis. This system is percolated into industrial manufacturing. Many industrial fields take advantage of IoT provided data, such as retail, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics and transportation. IoT operates with a wide range of applications in the industrial areas: security, process automation, easy maintenance and data analysis. With the help of IoT safety indicators can be constantly monitored and potential threats can be identified or avoided. By process automation human workforce is also able to be reduced. As smart machines are capable of outperforming humans at capturing, processing and analyzing data in real-time, it helps manufacturers to make more accurate decisions. Problems and inefficiencies are able to be indicated quicker, helping to react sooner and solve the problem as soon as possible. The mechanism reduces operating costs, saves time, provides efficiency, supports business intelligence (BI) and makes maintenance easier.

Synergy of IoT and AI (AIoT) In industrial automation, merging IoT with AI (Artificial Intelligence) is dominating the future of technology. The combination of these two technologies delivers us to AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things). AIoT is an intelligent and connected system which is capable of self-correction and self-healing. Besides AI, Machine learning and robotics also makes a huge impact on Industrial Automation. Machine learning is also a powerful tool for accurately predicting future events and robotics serves the reduction of human work.

IoT and security In the future many security questions could pop-up regarding the IoT collected data as it is controlled centrally. Hacking a centralized system could not only deliver huge problems to the manufacturers, but also can cause headaches for personal users. A new wave in the IoT system is edge computing which gives the possibility to collect data on the edge (on the device itself before sending over data) and allow huge bandwidth savings, too. This lets the big IoT service providers handle all of the data however it lands further security and privacy concerns.

Many manufacturers are already focusing on unbreakable solutions to this question.

The future of IoT No doubt, in a data-driven world applying automated processes and real time data, IoT rules our life. The limit is the sky from smart toilets, through smart beds to self-driving cars. Especially in industrial automation where IoT brings to businesses great accuracy, enhanced performance, cost-effectiveness, less errors, lower power needs, quick completion of processes, easy control and maintenance. Self-driving transportation methods or self-healing healthcare programs will be able to implement unique solutions in the future. The only concern is the security and the privacy of data. How can it be controlled and who will be responsible for that? What kind of steps must be taken ahead? How machine to machine communication will be supervised? The companies capable of finding topnotch security solutions will emerge as the next generation of industry leaders.