Origin of IoT
In the year 2000 we have seen a new era of ubiquitous computing. It means connectivity every time and everywhere. Number of humans on the earth will become minority and number of connected things will outnumber. The challenge is that all the connected things generate data all the time. This data need to be handled and analysed.
Internet of Thing will become more complex network with much wider scope. It has many more complexities as compared to the current network. Internet, which is considered as a global network connecting computers will now connect not only computing devices but it will interconnect anything and everything.
Therefore, objects such as lights, fans, heating devices, gas stoves, microwaves, wheel chairs, refrigerators, air conditioners, locks, doors, tables, chairs and anything that you can imagine can be connected and form the part of Internet.
IoT has lot to offer to the society. Imagine that a blind person is crossing a road with IoT enabled stick in his hand which is guiding him about directions and warning for obstacles. Consider another case where IoT enabled wheel chair is operated remotely by patient’s wards. This is the whole vision of IoT. IoT has potential to make everything smart whether it is cities, homes, farms, schools, colleges, laboratories or gardens.
Physical devices are of different types. Several technologies like low powered embedded systems, cloud computing, data science, computer vision, big data, machine learning, deep learning and technologies from Electrical engineering and mechanical engineering are required.
Over 9 billion things have been interconnected till now and it is projected that in near future over 20 billion things will be interconnected. IoT will form a big Internet.
The term “Internet of Things (IoT)” was coined by Kevin Ashton in a presentation given by him at Proctor & Gamble in 1999. Kevin Ashton conceptualized Internet of Things as
“If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things – using data they gathered without any help from us – we would be able to track and count everything, and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost”– Kevin Ashton (1999)1.
According to CISCO-IBSG (CISCO Internet Business Solution Group), IoT refers to exactly the time when connected “things or objects” grow more in number as compared to human being.
However, the Internet of Things is considered to be known in the year 2008 – 2009 according to a report published by CISCO IBSG2. The total number of interconnected device will reach to 25 billions by the year 2015 and this number will be doubled in next 5 years. That is, it is estimated that by the year 2020 number of interconnected devices will become 50 billions. Figure 1 shows the increase in connected devices with increase in world population.
Figure 1. Growth in Connected Devices
Figure 2 shows the growth in usage of connected devices by people.
Figure 2. Each person will have more number of connected devices in coming years
Internet of Things evolved gradually in several stages. The inventor of Berkeley Unix and the founder of Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy, in his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1999, described the concept of “Six Webs”3. First, “The Near Web”, that is, the Internet accessible from a Laptop or Desktop. Second, “The Here Web”, that is the Internet always available to you in Mobile Phones. Third, “The Far Web”, that is, the Internet available on Television. Fourth, “The Weird Web”, that is, the Internet that you use to interact through voice. Fifth, “B2B”, where machines interact with each other and the Sixth one is “D2D”, that is the Internet of Sensors.
In 2000, LG launched first Internet Refrigerator that was capable of sensing the types and quality of products being stored. In 2001, David L. Broke at MIT proposed Electronic Product Code (EPC)4 that uniquely identifies products and thus enabling the tracking of products throughout their life cycle. The objective was to enable coordination among physical things that can be controlled remotely. In the year 2003, Bernard Traversat and co-authors presented a research paper “Project JXTA-C: Enabling Web of Things”5 in 36th Hawaii Conference on System Sciences – 2003” that describes implementation of JXTA protocol stack that can be embedded at system level.
In the same year Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII) in Ivrea, Italy started Arduino project. In 2005, single board microcontroller was developed at IDII that was used in various interactive projects developed by students. In 2008, IPSO Alliance was formed to promote Internet Protocol (IP) to enable communication between smart objects in the fields of energy, consumer, healthcare, and industry applications. Table 1 shows the events resulting in emergence of Internet of Things.
Table 1. Important events related to the evolution of Internet of Things
| Year | Event |
| Year 1999 | Bill Joy created the term Device to Device Communication (D2D). |
| Year 2000 | The Internet Refrigerator (LG Internet DIOS – RS73CT) was launched by LG. |
| Year 2001 | David L. Broke at MIT proposed Electronic Product Code (EPC) for tracking physical things. |
| Year 2003 | Bernard Traversat and co-authors presented a research paper “Project JXTA-C: Enabling Web of Things” |
| Year 2005 | Single board microcontroller was developed at IDII. |
| Year 2008 | IPSO Alliance was formed to promote the use of IP for communication among smart things. |
| Year 2016 | We have seen lots of applications of IoT in connecting homes, coordinating vehicles, smart agriculture, manufacturing and many more fields. |
In the next section the literature survey in the direction of automation with emphasis on temperature and humidity monitoring and controlling is briefly described.