EDGE COMPUTING FOR INDUSTRIAL AIoT APPLICATIONS Alicia Wang, Product Manager, Moxa
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he advent of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has allowed a wide range of businesses to collect massive amounts of data from previously untapped sources and explore new avenues for improving productivity. By obtaining performance and environmental data from field equipment and machinery, organisations now have even more information at their disposal to make informed business decisions. Unfortunately, there is far too much IIoT data for humans to process alone, so most of this information goes unanalysed and unused1. Consequently, it is no wonder that businesses and industry experts are turning to AI and machine learning (ML) solutions for IIoT applications to gain a holistic view and make smarter decisions more quickly.
Most IIoT data goes unanalysed The staggering number of industrial devices being connected to the internet continues to grow year after year and is expected to reach
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41.6 billion endpoints in 2025, according to a 2019 report by IDC. What’s even more mind-boggling is how much data each device produces. In fact, manually analysing the information generated by all the sensors on a manufacturing assembly line could take a lifetime2. It’s no wonder that less than half of an organisation’s structured data is actively used in making decisions — and less than 1% of its unstructured data is analysed or used at all. In the case of IP cameras, only 10% of the nearly 1.6 exabytes of video data generated each day gets analysed, according to Intel. These figures indicate a staggering oversight in data analysis despite our ability to collect more and more information. This inability for humans to analyse all of the data we produce is precisely why businesses are looking for ways to incorporate AI and ML into their IIoT applications. Imagine if we relied solely on human vision to manually inspect tiny defects on golf balls on a manufacturing assembly line for
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