Social "hour" starting at 5:45. Talk at 6:30.
The Internet of Things (or IoT) refers to systems that communicate with each other in an Internet-like structure. This term was introduced by Kevin Ashton in 2009 although the concept had been discussed earlier; it gained greater attention when radio frequency identification (or RFID) tagging became a reality. Looking at the success of the current day internet, where networks of computers connect to each other (hence the term inter-net), the assumption is that if all objects were equipped with identifiers, they could be managed in a similar fashion. Besides using RFID, the tagging of things may be achieved through such technologies as near field communication (e.g. Bluetooth), barcodes, QR codes, and digital watermarking.
Equipping all objects in the world with tiny machine-readable identifiers could change our lives, much like futurists imagined (think of TV's "The Jetsons"). For instance, business may no longer run out of stock or generate waste products, since relevant parties would know which products are required and consumed.
According to Gartner, there will be nearly 26 billion devices on the Internet of Things by 2020. But that is not just one point of view; according to ABI Research, more than 30 billion devices will be wireless connected to the Internet of Things by 2020. Cisco has created a dynamic "connections counter" to track the estimated number of connected things from July 2013 until July 2020. Thus the concept, where devices connect to the internet/web is the most active research area in industrial networking.
