One area where I think networked MCUs/sensors will be hugely beneficial to mankind, without posing undue risk, is agriculture. Imagine, for example, a state-wide irrigation system that could balance water supplies across millions of acres and distribute that water only where needed due to crop life-cycle, weather conditions and so on. Or imagine being able to monitor for insect infestation or crop diseases remotely so that insecticide application could be focused rather than broadcast.
Some of these things can be done today with satellite imaging and so on -- but placing, say, one solar-powered, networked sensor array in each acre or quarter section might yeild major benefits to crop yields (and save energy too).
ASEEMOV 3/17/2012 1:35:02 PM User Rank Program Manager
Re: Smart refrigerators
Hello Northstar,
Cool - this was another application that was demonstrated by one of the teams. They basically did this for the kitchen instead of refrigerator to keep track of the groceries. According to me this definitetly made a lot of sense for hotels chains and restaurants where in the order can be placed directly to the online store or the information could be sent to their central monitoring system who can then take the necessary actions. I believe the demo was called: "Smart Kitchen" or somthing like that. They also had sensors to detect cooking gas leakage etc. These systems could be as detailed as the one I tried to explain here or something as simple as sending an SMS (short message) to your mobile phone as an alert. You can also have a feature to query the system by sending message from your cell phone and get an update as a response to your query.
ASEEMOV 3/17/2012 1:13:47 PM User Rank Program Manager
Re: Who Worries About the Internet of Things?
Rich, Nemos,
This is a very interesting topic. Recently, we had some sort of internal (within company) technology show where several groups presented their ideas about future projects and demos. There was one group which actually did this demo of parking reservation using an MCU (they could have used anything for that matter though..). They also made use of the GPS. In addition to internet based (using PC/laptop) parking reservation system they also talked about applications running on smart phones that use GPS and maps, track your position and then show nearby parking lots and also the availability.
You have brought up a very important issue of security. At least in my country, knowing how things are w.r.t. security, I think this can be a major concern. It is quite possible that the government may not even allow deployment of such intelligent parking reservation systems owing to security issues. I don't think we are prepared to deploy these kind of systems as yet. But if we only consider the positive side of it - it is like a dream come true.
northstar 3/17/2012 12:37:33 PM User Rank Program Manager
Smart refrigerators
I can think to another example for "Internet of things": refrigerators that are connected directly to the Internet and have the capacity to monitor your daily suplies. And when it sees that an aliment is finished (like milk) it just makes an order through internet. And you will just need to go and pick up your shoppings from grocery store, or better, they will be delivered directly to your home. It will create some trouble if your refrigerator will go crazy and it will start to order tones of food from several online shops :-)
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