From an article written by Javier Garcia-Martinez Professor, University of Alicante:

The Internet of Things (IoT), built from inexpensive microsensors and microprocessors paired with tiny power supplies and wireless antennas, is rapidly expanding the online universe from computers and mobile gadgets to ordinary pieces of the physical world: thermostats, cars, door locks, even pet trackers. New IoT devices are announced almost daily, and analysts expected to up to 30 billion of them to be online by 2020.

The explosion of connected items, especially those monitored and controlled by artificial intelligence systems, can endow ordinary things with amazing capabilities—a house that unlocks the front door when it recognizes its owner arriving home from work, for example, or an implanted heart monitor that calls the doctor if the organ shows signs of failing. But the real Big Bang in the online universe may lie just ahead.

Scientists have started shrinking sensors from millimeters or microns in size to the nanometer scale, small enough to circulate within living bodies and to mix directly into construction materials. This is a crucial first step toward an Internet of Nano Things (IoNT) that could take medicine, energy efficiency, and many other sectors to a whole new dimension.

 

timthumb.php_
Image Credit: REUTERS/Aly Song

Recent News