1. The Evolution of Internet of Things
February 2011 | Casaleggio Associati
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2. Focus – Internet of Things – February 2011
Table of contents
Introduction
The evolution of the Internet
The evolution of the Internet of things
The world is the Index
Take the world on line
Take control of the world
Let things talk to each other
Let things become intelligent
Energy and connectivity
Where it works
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3. Focus – Internet of Things – February 2011
Introduction
Internet of Things, is a new revolution of the Internet. Objects make themselves
recognizable and they get intelligence thanks to the fact that they can communicate
information about themselves and they can access information that has been
aggregated by other things. Alarm clocks go off early if there’s traffic; plants
communicate to the sprinkler system when it’s time for them to be watered;
running shoes communicate time, speed and distance so that their wearers can
compete in real time with people on the other side of the world; medicine
containers tell your family members if you forget to take the medicine. All objects
can get an active role thanks to their connection to the Internet.
The design of objects connected to the Internet is by now across the board in all
sectors, and especially in the media. Estimates suggest that in 5 to 10 years there
will be 100 billion devices connected to the Internet.1 Two orders of magnitude
greater than the 1.5 billion PCs and the billion mobile phones that can be connected
to the Internet that are today present in the world.
All the same, it’ll be the simplest objects that will dominate the scene. By the end
of 2012, for example, physical sensors will generate 20% of non-video Internet
traffic.2
1
Source: Michael Nelson, IBM IT director 3
2
Source: Gartner Group, 2010
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4. Focus – Internet of Things – February 2011
From Internet of people to Internet of things
Communication between computers started with the EDI (Electronic Data
Interchange) that made possible direct dialogue between two PCs. With the Internet,
all the computers connected to the Internet can talk to each other and with the
connection of mobile phones, the connection has become mobile.
The evolution that we have been witnessing in the last few months is an extension of
this Internet to all the things that surround us.
Up until now the Internet has been the first place for uniting people by means of
different types of social media (Email, Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, …), now it is
being transformed into the tool that will allow all objects to interact and in certain
cases to gain access to the collective knowledge that they will generate.
With social media, we have improved our possibilities for relating to each other
beyond the limits of direct physical relations, so for example, we can go beyond the
anthropological limit of 150 people 3 with whom we can keep in direct contact.
The Internet of Things will make it possible for objects to get information about
their position in the world, to interact with other objects and to have access to
comparative information for data gathered in their vicinity.
The evolution from Internet of People to Internet of Things
Fonte: Casaleggio Associati, 2011
4
3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number
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5. Focus – Internet of Things – February 2011
The Evolution of The Internet of Things
The Internet of Things is a gradual revolution that will lead to all the objects
surrounding us being connected to the Internet in
some way. On the other hand it’ll happen that all
content starting with music going right up to film
will migrate towards digital media. For this reason,
the physical devices holding content will have less
and less significance. Music will be listened to in
MP3 format, books will be listened to as audio-books
or read on devices for e-books, and newspapers will
be read from PCs or tablets. But even the objects
that access content are multiplying. For example,
PlingPlong4 PlingPlong is a cushion that reads books
that are brought close to it. Nabaztag5, is a
‘rabbit’
connected to
the Internet and it reads newspapers, emails,
weather forecasts, messages and even audio-
books downloaded from the Internet. The
rabbit has
recently also
had an
evolution with
Tux Droid6
that in the ‘penguin’
version makes it possible to be programmed directly
with open software.
Digital content will be ever more accessible with
the evolution of Internet readers that make it
possible to exploit content in all occasions of use
for which today we use physical data storage
devices. For example Chumby7, a viewer connected
via wifi, and the iPad8 let you quickly get access to
online content without needing to turn on your PC.
The evolution that is partially happening right now is
in the transformation to digital of the
information needed to reproduce objects with
3D9 printers, or ‘making machines’ that make it
possible to reproduce physical objects in your
own home.
As regards software services, we are seeing the
evolution of platforms for accessing content
directly online. For example, TV series in the
United States can be viewed directly on the
Hulu10 site that has free online broadcasting of
TV serials with breaks for advertising. Films can
4
http://welovetechnology.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/540/
5
http://www.nabaztag.com/it/index.html
6
http://wiki.tuxisalive.com/index.php/Main_Page
7
http://www.chumby.com/pages/learn_overview
8
http://www.apple.com/it/ipad/
9
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_youtube_videos_about_printing_3d_objects.php?utm_source=feedburner&
utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+readwriteweb+(ReadWriteWeb) 5
10
http://www.hulu.com
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6. Focus – Internet of Things – February 2011
be viewed on su Netflix11, a site where you can view if you take out a monthly
subscription and online versions of radio can be listened to all over the world or
created on demand with services like Jango12.
11
http://www.netflix.com
12
http://www.jango.com 6
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7. Focus – Internet of Things – February 2011
 The world is the index13
The world is the index that we will use to classify and identify the things that
surround us. For example, the photos that we
take have ever more frequently the location of
the photographer and the photos can be
organised according to location using Google
Earth14. Wikitude15 provides information on
monuments, commercial activities and other
objects that are in our surroundings at a
particular time.
The indicator of time connected to that of
location can be used to classify all sorts of
material and any object. For this reason, all our actions will always be connected to
these characteristics and they will connect objects to each other simply because
they are or were in the same place at a certain moment in time.
The most interesting sphere that emerges from this way of thinking is future time.
It’s not by chance that the Smartphone applications that are used the most are those
connected to forecasting the future in a certain place, like weather forecasts, traffic
news and the location of traffic cameras, etc.
13
Ringrazio Kevin Kelly (kk.org) per questa intuizione e definizione.
14
http://earth.google.com 7
15
http://www.wikitude.org/
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8. Focus – Internet of Things – February 2011
 Take the world on line
The things that are surrounding us can have an information shadow on the Internet.
Monuments, museums and works of art already have a lot of information available
about them online. And this is even more so for objects produced in series like books
and in a future that is not so far off, this will also be true for people.
The RFID16 tags, devices that contain chips that can
be read by nearby sensors, are becoming ever
more popular and are also being used for the
chronometry of athletes
in almost all the most
popular running races.
The RFID tags can also be
purchased for private use,
for example the
Championchip17 can be
worn when running in
different parks around the
world 18 (for example Regent's Park in London) so as to be
timed with a chronometer and to see your own time
shown on the big screens
or online. Domestic
animals can wear RFID19 collars that
are recognised by doors that can open to let them
enter.
Furthermore, it’s possible to have codes applied to
objects that are all around us so that they can be
recognised automatically. For example, Stickybits 20
can issue bar codes to be stuck on objects and you
can be warned if they are scanned. An evolution of
this system is Mir:row21, an RFID reader connected to
your PC that carries out
actions according to the
tags that are brought close to it, connected for
example to your child’s house keys so when they are
recognised, a message is sent to the parents to say that
the child has arrived home. If a book is brought close,
then this can start a process to read the book in audio
reading.
The RFID tags are also used to
identify people. For
example, electronic
passports contain
one and at passport control they can be read even
from a distance. ‘It’s alive inside’ is a project by
Guinness to follow a rugby game by the use of RFID
tags inserted into the ball and on the players22. All
the movements on the field are followed in a
detailed way by a computer that can check the
speed of the sprinting, the details of the ball passing
16
it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Frequency_IDentification
17
www.championchip.it/pubblico/timePoint.do
18
www.mychampionchip.com/sportsareas.jsf
19
http://www.dogdoors.com/productView.php?id=28
20
stickybits.com/
21
www.violet.net/_mirror-give-powers-to-your-objects.html 8
22
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NNL0aHF-Y8
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9. Focus – Internet of Things – February 2011
and all the information that is difficult to see just with your eyes.
The technology to track objects has evolved even further with mobile phones that
can pick up information and can be picked up from a short
distance. For example, the Nokia 6212, has a system
called Near Field Communication (NFC) that can be used
to make payments
(rather than using “A year from now, basically every new phone
a credit card). It sold will have [near field communication].
can be used to It's a two-way, bi-directional RFID
gain access to a communication link that makes this device
work as a tag or reader.”
trade fair or as a
substitute for a Håkan Djuphamma, Ericsson's vice-president
ticket that can of systems architecture, 06/2009
be sent to a
telephone that transmits the code to the sensors nearby23. An add-on called iCarte24,
has been created for the iPhone and it enables the phone to use NFC functions. The
RFID readers in the shops and in the trade fairs make a unique online identification
of the mobile phone and the owner can associate it with a credit card or an entrance
ticket.
The evolution of object recognition is already
happening and it means that it is not necessary
to depend on codes or labels, but simply the
direct identification of the objects around us.
For example, with Google Shopper25, a book can
be identified directly by its cover and not just by
its bar code. With programs like SoundHound26
and Shazam27 it’s possible to recognise music
while it is being broadcast. With Picasa28 è , it is
possible to recognise people’s faces, in the
future and in real time. It’s probable that
technologies will evolve to be able to recognise all the unique
objects existing on the earth, to identify those products that are
part of a series by their position if that’s fixed (like a lamp post)
or from a code that can be picked up at a distance if the objects
can be moved.
Some objects are already tracked continually around our cities.
In certain cases this sort of information is indirectly available
to the end user, like the distance of the nearest available taxi
if we call a taxi hotline. In other cases, the information can be
freely used, as in the case of tracking public transport. For
the city of Boston, an iPhone app called Catchthebusapp29,
lets you know the location of the public transport vehicles around
the city and the exact time that they will come by your stop. Trenitalia offers a
service that tells you if the train is late.
In certain cases, even animals are tracked using RFID, like for example in Japan and
Australia30, where the cows are tagged at birth to guarantee their provenance.
23
Altri telefoni compatibili: Nokia 6131 NFC, BenQ T80, Motorola L7 (SLVR) NFC, Samsung SGH-D500E NFC, Samsung SGH-X700n (brick) NFC, Sagem-Orga my700X
NFC, Nokia 3220 + NFC Shell e dei modelli Kyocera. Ci si aspetta che i modelli aumentaranno dato che l’associazione GSMA degli operatori mobile hanno finalizzato lo
standard.
24
http://www.icarte.ca/docs/SW09-00XX-DS%20-%20iCarte.pdf
25
www.google.com/mobile/shopper/
26
www.soundhound.com/
27
www.shazam.com/
28
http://picasa.google.com/
29
http://catchthebusapp.com/ 9
30
http://www.idtechex.com/research/articles/rfid_tagging_of_cattle_by_law_in_australia_00000201.asp
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10. Focus – Internet of Things – February 2011
 Take control of the world
The world around us can talk to us and tell us its
needs. This is why the objects that have already been
monitored at a local level are now communicating
information via Internet so as to optimise use, as for
example the electricity or gas meters or closed circuit
TV cameras. Homecamera31 makes it possible to
remotely manage webcams connected to a computer.
Google lets you use a remote printer via the service
called Cloud Print32 and very probably this is just the
first of this type of service to be made available via
its browser/operating system called
Chrome.
At the same time, even objects that were not
monitored at one time can today supply data
that can be monitored and compared over
time. Withings33 is a wifi weighing machine
that keeps track of your weight each time you
use it.
To monitor
any object
connected to the
Internet there’s a platform called Pachube34 that
makes it possible for sensors connected to the
Internet to send data about themselves and make
them viewable in different ways that can be over
time and according to place, but above all to trigger
actions when certain values are reached (for
example, to open a window when a certain
temperature is reached).
31
http://www.homecamera.com
32
http://www.google.com/support/cloudprint/?hl=en
33
http://www.withings.com/it/index/?taranim=1 10
34
http://www.pachube.com
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11. Focus – Internet of Things – February 2011
 Let the things talk to each other
Objects can interact with each other to exchange
and integrate data, to trigger actions and to
integrate how they work together. On the basis of
this concept, different intercommunication
languages have been developed. These are often
referred to as M2M35, anguages. Anyway, the most
efficient language is still XML that is used to
exchange data directly via the Internet.
Goodnightlamp36 s a set of lamps (still not yet on the
market) with an on/off switch that works via the
Internet. The bulbs switch on and off together with
their ‘twins’ around the world, and the people that
know each other who live apart, can see when the other one goes on (for example
our relative has come home) or when they turn
off.
Even plants can signal their needs. In fact,
with Botanicalls37, plants can communicate on
Twitter when they need watering and the
communication can go to a sprinkler system
connected to the Internet. The concept of
getting all the objects in a house38 to talk to
each other is by now the goal of many
companies and in particular IBM.
Objects can communicate with each other even at a local level and
then they can send the information gathered online. For example, Nike+39 inserts
accelerometers inside shoes so as to give information about the rhythm of the
running with the distance travelled and the time taken. Still at a local level, Poken40
can communicate. They are digital business cards that can swap data and then
download the data to your computer.
35
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_to_Machine
36
http://www.goodnightlamp.com/
37
http://www.botanicalls.com/
38
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/06/things_that_tweet.html
39
http://inside.nike.com/blogs/nikerunning_news-it_IT/2009/08/07/nike-sul-nuovo-iphone-3gs
http://nikerunning.nike.com/nikeos/p/nikeplus/it_IT/plus/#//dashboard/ 11
40
http://www.poken.com/
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12. Focus – Internet of Things – February 2011
 Let things become intelligent
Objects that interact with the Internet can create value that interlinks them. Object
Generated Content (OGC), that is the creation of knowledge and aggregated value
by individual objects, will be of certain orders of magnitude greater than any value
that can be created directly by people. The intelligence of OGC and its value are
sited in its planning. Up until now, the systems for having information shared are
limited to the use of sensors (for example: responding to temperature or pollution)
or to counters that can identify the best moments or the places for
getting energy.
Furthermore there are some examples of
interaction of objects that we have in the
home with information that is already on the
Internet. For example, WineM41 is a storage
system that allows you to put away bottles of
wine, to know where they are and to identify
them by illuminating the bottle that is being
searched for. The system is connected to the
Internet and can thus illuminate those bottles
recommended by a certain chef, to experience
with a particular dish, or those with a certain market value (reckoned in real time
via Winebid42).
The aggregation of information in real time can also
be shared with all those supplying information. Nike
has created Nike Human Race43 u a worldwide race
that everyone can take part in by making use of a Nike+
sensor in your shoes no matter where in the world you
are. The only constant for all participants is the
distance.
The intelligence of
things can be
developed by a
number of objects in
the same location. For example, GlowCap44 provides
intelligence to medicine bottles. They use light or sound
signals or a telephone call to remind you when they have
to be taken and they send your doctor or your family a
monthly report on what medicine has been taken.
The evolution of OGC will be in the direction of sharing
and the automatic use of the information that they can
provide. ‘Nike Human Race’ is an example but ‘GlowCap’ and ‘WineM’ could also in
the future give aggregated information on the time slots that are the most difficult
to remember to take pills or which wines are normally kept together in the same
wine cellar.
41
http://thingm.com/sketches/winem.html
42
http://www.winebid.com/
43
http://www.runtex.com/web/2-2089.asp 12
44
http://www.vitality.net/glowcaps.html
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13. Focus – Internet of Things – February 2011
Energy versus Connectivity
Two factors are needed for objects to be connected together: energy and
connectivity. The more energy and connectivity that is needed to connect things,
the fewer the objects that can be connected on the Internet. The technologies and
examples can thus be classed according to their potential for being widely
distributed.
ENERGY
CONNECTIVITY Absent On place or recharchable Always plugged in
Internet
(2 way)
Intelligent meters Remote access to the
Net
Internet
(1 way)
RFID Internet Tags RFID with sensors e-book readers
Adjacent
connectivity
RFID NFC
Without
connection
Codes on objects
13
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14. Focus – Internet of Things – February 2011
Applications
Possible applications are likely to be in those places where there is connectivity and
energy such as in the office and at home.
Today, applications are developing mostly in relation to the mobile phone thanks to
its widespread use and its capacity to maintain energy and connectivity wherever it
is.
Energy vs. Connectivity. Where internet things will be.
14
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15. Focus – Internet of Things – February 2011
Casaleggio Associati
Consultancy on Internet strategy and research on the digital
economy.
For every organisation, the Internet makes it necessary to have a long term strategy
with the definition of priorities, feasibility, realisation and evaluation of the return
on investment. An Internet strategy is based on a whole vision in which models of
business, communication and web marketing are evaluated all together.
For the development of companies on the Internet, you need a detailed knowledge
of the evolution that is happening, at both national and international levels, in
different environments.
Casaleggio Associati (www.casaleggio.it) develops strategic Internet consultancy
for companies by means of specific competencies of business owners, affiliates
and partners and it prepares reports on the digital economy.
Areas of activity
An online strategy covers the evaluation of different factors such as, for example,
the perceived identity on the Internet , the business model to be implemented and
the evaluation of the areas of the ROI. Below you’ll find the main areas of analysis
carried out by Casaleggio Associati.
Contact details
Contattaci per definire la strategia on line della tua impresa:
strategia@casaleggio.it
Via Morone 6, 20121 Milano
Telefono +39 02 89011466
Fax +39 02 72093741
E-mail info@casaleggio.it
Website www.casaleggio.it
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