Will the rapid development of the Internet of Things inevitably have a huge impact on innovation?

alan000345

Will the rapid development of the Internet of Things inevitably have a huge impact on innovation? [Copy link]

 

Ten years ago, before the Internet of Things became a buzzword, Texas Instruments had a simple idea to make it easier for developers to add complex radio technologies like Wi-Fi to their embedded applications. The prospect was exciting. Wireless connectivity would open new doors for our customers, helping them collect data and deliver a wide variety of new services. It was like the early days of the World Wide Web, when the sky was the limit. Wi-Fi was a simple technology choice that worked almost anywhere, without major network management. Today, thousands of companies use Wi-Fi as the foundation for connectivity. Still, when Texas Instruments engineers travel to meet with customers and attend industry events, they often hear a question: Is the Internet of Things going to take off? It’s not a simple “yes” or “no.” People expect wireless capabilities in their electronic devices. Major IoT investments are happening every day, with companies opening development centers and investing billions of dollars in the space. Traditional non-electronics networking companies are building IoT strategies. Yet, we’re seeing only a handful of truly transformational applications or new services. As often happens in times of transformational change, people expect transformational change to happen sooner rather than later. When change finally arrives, its impact often exceeds expectations. That’s what we think will happen with the Internet of Things. The ability to virtually connect every item and collect data is transformative. This concept has the potential to disrupt old markets and business models. The real innovation is how to expand value with data and services enabled by connected products. Many products will benefit from adding these new levels of connectivity and cloud services, and these products traditionally contain very little electronics. Such innovative products include doorbells, locks, thermostats, vacuum cleaners, and appliances. Bringing these technologies into the era of the Internet of Things will require support from multiple engineering disciplines and new knowledge required to develop these products.

First, the company’s electrical engineering department needs to be enhanced, preferably with some radio frequency (RF) engineers to help with the challenges associated with Wi-Fi or other RF technologies. The challenges with RF are not only design sense, robustness, and performance, but also the need for products to pass standards and regulatory certifications.

Once hardware design is solved, there is the software problem. As product complexity increases, the demand for software in products increases dramatically, from low-level firmware to networking (TCP/IP), applications (including mobile apps), and user interfaces.

In addition, products need to connect to the cloud in a robust way, which requires learning new protocols, such as message queue telemetry transmission and entire cloud applications, as well as other regulations regarding data collection and storage, which vary from country to country.

Finally, but perhaps the most important issue is security. Providing adequate security is critical to the success of individual products, but also for the industry as a whole. The challenges in security mirror those mentioned above. These challenges cover all levels of IoT products, from radio frequency to device level and cloud. You must also consider whether every step in the development process is secure.

For most companies involved in this field, they must master and manage many new technologies before they can make a new, production-worthy "Hello World" IoT new product. Most companies have realized how complex a complete IoT product is and the breadth of the scope involved, which means that they are on the edge of Hello World.

Many companies that released their first round of products invested so much energy in developing basic features and infrastructure that they didn’t have enough time to develop innovative features and services, which is where the full value will ultimately be found. We are now entering the second and third iterations of products, and more and more complete integrated solutions with truly intelligent features will emerge. This will truly change many areas as we know them today.

Texas Instruments has been working hard to remove many of the barriers mentioned above so that our customers can focus on innovation. This includes using certified modules to simplify RF design, using cloud plug-in pre-installation to complete the software development kit (SDK), providing hardware-based comprehensive functions, and supporting end-to-end security. We will see great innovation in smart products, where access and analysis of data are making progress.

The industry is investing in the Internet of Things at full speed, but we haven’t seen any progress yet. When it does, we believe it will lead us to the next stage of the industrial revolution.

Learn more about the SimpleLink MCU platform

This software development environment provides flexible hardware, software and tool options for your IoT applications.

star_66666

It seems

alan000345

Yes, it should bring about big changes

dfwisdom

Personally, I think yes. Maybe in the next 50 years, all "things" will be interconnected, and everything will be based on the visual management of the Internet. In the future, every "person" will also be interconnected, but this will lead to a huge problem, which is the complete transparency of personal privacy. In the future, humans will be extremely disgusted with and avoid close contact with the Internet. By that time, AI and robots will share many of humans' work.

alan000345

Yeah.