IoT Raj

The idea of ‘Automata’ originates from the mythologies of many cultures across the globe. Early inventors and engineers from ancient civilization such as Greek, Chinese, or Ptolemaic Egyptian attempted to develop a self-operating or automated machine resembling the humans and animals. The term ‘Robot’ comes from the Czech word “Robota” refers to “Forced Work or Labor” was first used to refer the word ‘Artificial Automata’ in a 1920 play R.U.R (Rossum’s Universal Robots) by the Czech interwar writer ‘Karl Capek.’ In 1928, one of the first ‘Humanoid Robots,’ invented by W.H.Richards delivered a speech in the annual event of the ‘Model Engineers Society’ in London.

The brief history resonates that ‘Robots’ are not a new innovation but is a ‘Thinking Machine’ which is programmed by a computer and is capable of doing complex series of actions automatically. Robots can be semi-autonomous to autonomous which range from humanoids to industrial robots, patient assistant robots, medical operating robots, to nanorobots. While the UAVs or drone robots have a long history, dating back to Renaissance period, Leonardo Da Vinci’s design for a ‘Robotic Knight,’ including things like German remote-controlled Torpedo boats during the First World War. However, the robots have become more sophisticated with the technological advancements are expected not just to proliferate the industries but also reconceptualise in the coming decade. According to the “International Federation of Robotics, the world now includes approx. 1.1 million working robots and machines account for 80% of the work in manufacturing a car.”

The “Robot Revolution” will transform the face of the Global Economy phenomenally in the next twenty years by significantly cutting the costs of doing business and exacerbating social inequality, as ‘Robots’ might potentially take over every job, from flipping burgers to caring for elderly, according to the latest study. These disruptions are bringing in a paradigm shift which will change the way a human being lives, communicates, and works. The penetrations of Artificial Intelligence and Robots has hit every industry vertical and is become an integral part of our daily lives.

There has been a growing concern, and fears about humans being replaced by machines are not new and are justified to a certain extent from my perspective. However, The relationship between the jobs and robots is not as concrete as it is being portrayed. In fact, the robots taking over some of the jobs will grow the economy which merely means that there will be more robots to do many jobs that people do today which in turn is improving the economy grow as there are people and robots doing the jobs simultaneously. I firmly do believe that there are jobs which only a man can perform and cannot be replaced by a robot. When you have robots perform specific jobs more efficiently, you are just building a productive and cohesive environment and society. Moreover, societies and organisations have always found ways of turning the technological evolution only to their advantage.

This next wave of exponential technological growth is powered by Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Cloud Computing. The automation which is seen only in movies will now be seen in our homes too. A digital super-connected world with endless possibilities. The world’s half of all the robots are in Asia, Europe – 32%, NA – 16%, Australia – 1%, Africa – 1% and 30% of all the robots in the world are in Japan. Japan is the world leader in the Robotics Technology and is said to be the “Robotic Capital” of the world, and the Japanese government is trumpeting robotics as a pillar of its growth strategy where robots and human-beings co-exist. In this exclusive case study on Japan, let me walk you through the robotics innovations and how in Japan Robots are displacing some of the human workforces.

Robots pretty much see the world the way we do, but there is a vast difference between seeing the world and understanding it. Just to be able to move around and do tasks, robots need to identify every single object around them by comparing it against the whole database of things. They also have to gauge direction and depth by comparing the sizes of things to each other, and they will have to recognise people by analysing each of their individual features. We do not think how a robot makes sense of our world. Similarly, we do not think twice about why a robot looks the way it does.

1. Henn-a Hotel: The world’s first hotel run by robots. It is the largest concentration of robots in a single hotel. The hotel’s owner, Hideo Sawada, says he wants to make it, “The Ultimate in Efficiency hotel in the world” by reducing the workforce and replacing its 90% of the workforce with robots right from the front desk to the porter, is all manned by the robots. The one area where the hotel still relies on humans is the security personnel. The hotel is dotted with security cameras, and the real people monitor the CCTV to ensure the safety and security of their guests and also to ensure no one makes off with an expensive robot. Here is the link for a quick tour of the hotel.

In this hotel robotic appearance span, the gamut – AV assistance, Rector receptionist, Android animals, and humanoid robots, where not one robot here looks human as they are all designed to entertain the guests. However, do we prefer robots to look like humans? Today robots have evolved the clunky tinman of the past to exactly look like the ‘Human Beings’ – Meet Erica

2. Android Erica: Eric is a robot who can not only make jokes but also has a ‘soul’, according to her creator and is learning to develop compassion, Erica is also pipped to be a Japanese news presenter sometime this year and could make a national debut. Hiroshi Ishiguro – director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, part of the Department of Systems Innovation who calls himself Erica’s “Father”, said that “she is the most beautiful, human-like and autonomous android in this world”. The robot cannot move her arms but can work out where the sound is coming from so; Erica knows the person speaking with her. She also boasts 14 infra-red depth sensors, to track where people are in the room, and facial recognition capability. Erica is the super-realistic bot blurring the lines between woman and machine. Erica was created as part of JST Erato – one of the most highly-funded science projects in Japan. Dr Dylan Glas, Erica’s “architect”, said: “What we want to do is have a robot which can think and act and do everything completely on its own.” Watch the video about the origin of Erica here

Human-like robots are not pervasive in our environment yet, as they are still too expensive to manufacture on a mass scale. However, some roboticists believe that the robots need not look like humans to bridge the gap between a man and the machine.

3. Robot Nekotencho: Ms Yukiko Nakagawa, founder of Robot Technology Corp, believes that the only way robots can be a man’s best friend is when they look like animals instead of human beings. “When you think of cats, you can accept their strange behavior – jumping, dancing and many other strange behaviors. It is the same for this cat robot,” said Ms Nakagawa, who has devoted her life to the robotics industry. “But, if this robot had a human-like appearance, you would expect that it behaved like a human. For, e.g., to speak very cleverly and function very well and when it does not, it makes us uncomfortable because of the ‘Uncanny Valley’ a term coined by Japenese roboticist Mashiro Mori who created a graph that plotted how a human-robot looked against how much people liked it. The graph rises to the discomfort and distress that many of us feel on seeing something that is almost, but not quite individual, sets in and it shows a significant dip or the ‘Uncanny Valley’ at the point where the robot resembles a human the most.

Nekotencho is no risk of falling into the Uncanny Valley. The cat-shaped robot does the perfect job of greeting customers outside the company’s retail shop at the world-famous electronics town Akihabara.Today, are the Robots taking our jobs or replacing us humans? Could we meet the human rival robot in Japan?

4. Ontonaroid Female Robot: The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) is where the nation’s newest humanoid robots are housed. Miraikan Takeda is the Science Communicator guide in this museum, Miraikan has been expanding the areas in which she can use her skills. Miraikan has appeared on TV shows, and also as an actress on stage, and she is ready to replace a human being. The Robots are replacing many jobs in various industry verticals. Half of Japan’s population could be replaced by robots or artificial intelligence programs in the next twenty years. If robots are going to do a lot more of Japan’s jobs then what will it look like? Most of the people think that if their jobs were being taken over by a robot, they would prefer the bot to be a ‘Female.’ People have definite ideas of how their robots should look. Female waitresses that comfort diners, male chefs that fit the typical bill in Japan.

5. Gender Stereotypes: Professor Tatsuya Nomura has spent decades studying about the difference between a man and the machine. According to him, the more significant problem is not the debate between making robots look human or not. It is between referring to the robots as ‘Him or Her.’ The assignment of gender between robots is a very controversial issue because the gender in robots may produce gender stereotypes in the current society. For, e.g., In Japan, they have a stereotype that a receptionist should be a female. However, the receptionist need not be a female, and the male can also do the job of a receptionist. These types of gender stereotypes are causing similar problems in other countries too. In another, e.g., In Japan, a female wants to conduct some tasks, but these tasks are dominated by the males which are a kind of discrimination which is already existing in the society and culture. Hence, some robot designers use these stereotypes when they design their robots to smooth the interactions between the robots and humans which also reduces communication barriers.

So, let us take a look at how is Singapore is designing their robots are they gender stereotypes? – ‘Nadine’ is a female humanoid social robot which is modelled on Professor Nadia Magnenat Thalmann. Nadine is a robot receptionist at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) who made her public debut in the real world at the Art Science Museum last year. Nadine is fully autonomous and artificially intelligent. She formulates her own responses from the database she has built, from interacting with thousands of people. According to Prof Nadia, she believes that the industry should design more of the robots which are contrary to what it is actually in a real-life scenario. For, e.g., Nadia would like to build more female humanoid security robots instead of what it is today, which are only male personnel and vice versa, this will break the gender stereotypes created by the society and break the human mindset of such beliefs or practices. Watch the video here:

To summarize, Robotics is already disrupting most of the industry verticals. However, I envision that this revolution will create more job opportunities for humans as they will become integral to manage the ‘Machine’ workforce. The Robots can never replace jobs of the teachers and those in management positions which require Leadership, motivation, compassion or caring. Robotics has already created an impact in the manufacturing industry through automation. With Industry 4.0 every industry’s goal is to achieve the highest productivity with low cost of production. In my next article, I will discuss the different types of robots and the adaption of these robots within the major industry sectors.

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(Disclaimer: Please note no part of this blog may be copied or reused or republished or reproduced in any way, except to share using either the share feature of LinkedIn or posting a direct link to this blog. An excerpt from the blog can be quoted while sharing it in an above-mentioned manner. Any other form of reuse must be done only after obtaining the explicit written consent of the author)

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Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Digital Transformation, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’

Follow Me: Linked In      twitter

Source:  Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)

Blockchain technology has radically transformed and gained traction in the capital markets industry as one of the most revolutionary technological developments in the recent history. The last few decades was about the ‘Internet of information.’ Now the internet is entering an era based on the blockchain. The industry is witnessing the rise of ‘Internet of Value.’ In the era of the Internet of Information, the industry experienced the convergence of computing and communications technologies, while the Internet of Value will be powered by a smart combination of mathematics, cryptography, software engineering and behavioural economics.

The blockchain technology which is also called the distributed ledger technology promises to disrupt industries by challenging how we define value, structure society and reward contribution. The technologists strongly believe that blockchain will disrupt the business and redefine organizations and economies. Blockchain technology is although, in the early stages of R&D and Prototyping of use-cases, has significant potentials and helps create value by simplifying business processes and create trust, reducing the settlement times, safe records of transactions and business agreements, minimize counterparty risks, increase transparency for regulatory reporting, improve contractual term performance and User controlled networks.

Today, almost every company be it a start-up or a corporation is trying to create their own blockchains with specific use-cases to disrupt an array of industry sectors like Manufacturing, Healthcare, Trade Finance among many others. According to a survey conducted by “World Economic Forum, predicts that 10% of global GDP will be stored on the blockchain by 2027.” Even though the majority of the blockchain technology is in the finance industry, there is increasing interest in exploiting the application of the blockchain technology in other sectors especially in the manufacturing industry is growing.

Knowledge and Understanding of the Blockchain technology remains one of the principal challenges of the blockchain as there is lack of awareness and understanding of how it works, especially in sectors other than the banking industry. The blockchain will be able to create the most value for organizations only when they work together on areas of shared opportunity or pain, especially issues related to each industry sector. However, the problem with the current approach is that they are stove-piped – Organizations are developing their independent blockchains and applications to run on top of them. Hence, in any one industry sector, there are many different blockchains being developed by so many organizations for many different standards. This defeats the purpose of the distributed ledgers as it fails to harness the network effects, becomes inefficient in the current approaches that the industry is adopting.

Several big companies and start-ups are investigating the application of blockchain technology for supply chain management and auditing. Recently, IBM and Maersk recently announced a joint venture to create and deploy the world’s first blockchain based electronic shipping platform that will digitize the supply chain and track the international cargo in real-time for the manufacturing industry. The objective of this project was to reduce the paperwork and effort involved in the shipment. It is an end-to-end shipping solution which will give all the parties involved in the global trade a single view of where the cargo is and allow authorities to grant electronic approval for its movement. Blockchain will enable a single view of all the goods and shipping information via a virtual dashboard for the concerned parties right from manufacturers, shippers, port authorities and government agencies. IBM and Maersk hope to reduce the shipment costs dramatically, by reducing the paperwork, providing critical information rapidly and frequently, and prevention of shipping fraud. To learn more about this use-case, please refer to the link here

However, the problem which I foresee might arise say for, e.g., Maersk has their containers across the world. The containers are lifted from London and shipped to Dubai where Maersk’s has its own terminal, but if Maersk wants to ship to an ‘X’ country where it has no terminal and is represented and operated by a local vendor since the ‘X’ country might not allow for direct investment. Likewise, in every country, if Maersk were to go through a different vendor, there might be a possibility of a massive problem as Maersk might have to work with various blockchain technology platforms in each of these countries with the individual suppliers. Assuming Maersk has one million suppliers and one million transit points of its different suppliers how are IBM and Maersk going to solve this problem?

Similarly, the world’s Metal Exchange (LME) is based in London just like the United Nations, or NewYork Stock Exchange is in the United States. The registrar of shipping is in London. Let us assume that country ‘Y’ might disagree to get the metal rates from London. Similarly, every country might come up with its own challenges. For, e.g., With Iran, India has signed a deal for trading in ‘Indian Rupees.’ Hence, India has been able to circumvent the sanctions against countries – Iran, by being able to work out an agreement for transacting with them in Indian currency.

These challenges have led companies to develop their own blockchain platform for authenticating their transactions or claims for a particular currency or product for that country alone since they would own millions of nodes or computers within their network to provide solutions to the businesses and countries for smooth operations and expansion of their business across the world. The idea of eliminating the intermediaries or the traditional cumbersome processes has led to the companies swarming with use-cases using blockchain technology to disrupt the conventional way of doing business and adapt to simplified ways of doing business era of digitization.

The blockchain is touted as the world-changing technology in many ways. Imagine with every company getting into blockchain; they will need to own millions of computers for building the blockchain network or platform of high-performance systems or nodes powered on for authenticating the transactions. This has led to the growing demand for high-end systems which in turn has led to the increase in the hardware, software, service and infrastructure costs. Besides, there might be a potential demand-supply issue to meet the market demand.

However, these technological advancements potentially might lead to server overloads, bandwidth issues, and a significant increase in the power consumption. With millions of systems in use and every node having to authenticate a transaction, it might become the cause of critical outburst for data storage given that all data will have to be stored on Cloud, and the cloud infrastructure shortly might enter a zone where the incapacitation of the data storage is bound to happen.

Johann Snorri Sigurbergsson from Icelandic energy company HS Orka told BBC that, “The energy used by Iceland’s bitcoin mining market is experiencing “exponential growth,” and data centres may use more energy than all of the country’s homes in 2018.” He also said, Iceland “won’t have enough energy” to power numerous new data centres that have been proposed. This indicates that the world is going to face a severe demand-supply challenge for Energy and Power Supply; with the growing number of data centres, high-performance computing systems owned by both organizations and individuals would require energy which might not be available.

Amazon has already stepped up in addressing this issue by announcing the launch of 18 wind and solar projects across the United States with 35 more to come to address its ever-expanding global network of fulfilment and data centers. These projects will generate sufficient energy to power 330,000 homes annually and also provide hundreds of jobs and millions of investment across the country for now and globally in the future.

The next issue is the growing electronic waste which poses a massive risk to the environment and human health. E-waste management is a critical issue in today’s digitally dependent world, where the use of ever-increasing electronic devices are polluting the environment beyond one’s imagination. Only 20% of the approx 10.5 million metric tonnes of all e-waste was recycled. What happens to the remaining 80% of the e-waste un-disposed? Many start-ups along with their Government are coming up with solutions for recycling and disposing of the e-waste. The ramp up can only be possible with corporations investing and supporting the effort.

In my opinion, blockchain technology would work wonders if it is regulated and follows the Industry standard and methodologies. The solution which I am proposing is that every industry should develop their own industry-specific blockchain which is authorised and approved by that particular industry bodies globally with well-defined relevant industry-specific Standards, Policies, Legal and Regulatory Frameworks. I believe this will create a ‘Secured and Trusted’ Industry-specific ‘Shared Network.’ This solution will eliminate the need for an individual company to build their independent blockchain platform and this by itself will resolve many of the above challenges which I have raised.

To summarize, any new transformation has its underlying challenges which could pose significant roadblocks on the path of implementation if not address early-on. However, blockchain technology will evolve in the coming years which I predict to be a ‘Trillion Dollars’ Market, and after all, just like nature, technological advancements will find their way around the artificially constructed barriers as they evolve.

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(Disclaimer: Please note no part of this blog may be copied or reused or republished or reproduced in any way, except to share using either the share feature of LinkedIn or posting a direct link to this blog. An excerpt from the blog can be quoted while sharing it in an above-mentioned manner. Any other form of reuse must be done only after obtaining an explicit written consent of the author)

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Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Digital Transformation, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’

Follow Me: Linked In      twitter

Source:  Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)

Every transformation comes embedded with it, a set of underlying challenges. Today, every industry is increasingly becoming technology driven at its core more than ever before, and it is believed that most innovative technologies are revolutionising the data centre, modernizing the digital workplace and building bridges into the world of Hybrid or Multi or Serverless Cloud which are the next-generation cloud computing platforms.

Cloud technology platform is creating ever-growing business opportunities that are radically different and new which can be built provided we discard what we know, how we even think or operate in every aspect of the enterprise not limited to just IT. It simply means, either you ‘Transform or Die.’ The legacy data centres are not going to help nor recreation of on-premise complexity in the cloud. The thinking has to be transformational and revolutionary which is typified in the transportation industry by Uber and Grab or Airbnb in the hospitality industry.

The IT is amidst of once every twenty years tectonic shift and most recent was in 1990s transition from the Client/Server computing to the Internet which is now being supplanted by the transition to ‘Cloud Computing.’ The disruption is far-reaching and impossible to stop the revolution of the way we store and access data. Even though the businesses are aware of the incredible value, the cloud computing brings, a smooth adoption of any new technology is not free from issues. Let us understand some of the most significant challenges which are essential on the path of this next major shift:

1. Legacy IT Infrastructure:

Most of the businesses have the potential debilitating problem of existing ‘Legacy IT’ infrastructures and strategies which weren’t built to adopt or leverage new and advanced technologies, provide adequate control for remodelling, and to support new business models. Conventional data centres were created in a siloed manner for maximum capacity and peak loads. They were not designed to be flexible, integrate or elastic. Moreover, to make matters worse, the siloed service does not communicate to others and might have been developed to differing standards. Integrating them could become difficult due to incompatible standards, database design, authentication, or communication protocols.

2. Security and Privacy:

One of the most significant challenges in the technology world is ‘Data Security and Privacy.’ The adoption of Cloud Computing depends upon how it tackles the data security and privacy concerns of the businesses and the fact that the valuable enterprise data will be stored outside the corporate firewall raises serious concern for the companies. With growing cybersecurity crimes, attacks on the cloud infrastructure would affect numerous clients who have stored their valuable customer’s personal information. The cloud service providers will have to develop robust security applications, encryption systems and other security software for averting any security breach and provide SLAs that guarantee the protection of data security and privacy.

3. Interoperability and Portability:

The organisations cannot treat the cloud environment like their on-premise data centre. Hence, the organisations will focus on total cost of ownership (TCO) before considering the migration. The businesses should have the flexibility of switching the providers and migrating in and out without having a vendor lock-in period. The cloud computing services should have the capability to integrate with ease to the on-premise IT.

4. Infinite demand for Data Centers:

The hyperscale and cloud computing innovations are displacing traditional enterprise systems and the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, pose an ever-growing pressure on the IT departments and Data Centers. The evolving growth and importance of ‘ Big Data Analytics’ – the resultant of data coming from the ‘Connected Devices’ and Internet of Things (IoT) have led to the rapid growth of data centres. With organisations undergoing a digital transformation, every business today has become mission critical, and every company will become a data company; is evident as you will see every industry gathering more information to analyse data about their customer.

The data deluge will challenge the future of the data centre community’s ability of scalability and to keep pace with the ever-growing demand for computing and storage capacity. The most significant outburst will happen when the pioneered innovators like Amazon, Google, Microsoft or IBM will have to chart strategies when their data centres max out in capacity and physical infrastructure. Apart, from that, the other critical challenge which the Cloud Providers are already facing is the ‘Power Consumption.’ The organisations spend more on cooling their data centres rather on powering and operating the IT equipment. The increase in usage of electricity is impacting the environment and world around us, whereas today; we are talking about conserving energy and creating a green environment. It becomes mission-critical to address the data centre strategy around capacity and power usage effectiveness (PUE).

5. Performance and Bandwidth Cost:

The organisations should periodically monitor and review the established key performance metrics or indicators and take necessary actions to manage any potential and real deviations from what is planned. The businesses cut hardware costs, but they still have to spend on the bandwidth or high-speed internet. However, the bandwidth cost might be a low cost for smaller applications, but it can significantly increase for the data-intensive applications. Delivery of intense and complex data over the network requires sufficient and high-speed bandwidth. The cloud providers will have to be able to offer continued and high performance for the applications running on their cloud, while the businesses also need to analyze the TCO before adopting to any new technology.

6. Service Quality:

The cloud providers very much lack the round the clock service support to the customers, resulting in frequent outages. It becomes crucial for the companies to monitor the service being provided by the cloud vendors using either internal or third-party support and maintenance team. It is critical to have plans to monitor SLAs, usage, robustness, performances, and business dependency of these services.

7. Cloud Subject Matter Expertise:

The organisations cannot assume that the existing IT staff is capable of handling a leap to the cloud. AWS, Azure, Bluemix, and all other cloud platforms are radically different, and the companies need to invest in training their IT staff to ramp up their skills if they do not budget to hire cloud experts from the industry since cloud ignorance will easily cause a security catastrophe. There are hundreds of millions of mission-critical and sensitive business data are being exposed on the public internet which the organisations have no idea, and if a malicious hacker gained access to the data, the vast majority of entities might have to face complete internal network comprise. Hence it becomes extremely crucial for the businesses to avert this potential disaster by spending on building a team who have sufficient knowledge about the technology and industry experience for handling such critical responsibility.

To summarize, the organizations cannot believe that the cloud service provider will handle everything for them. All these challenges are probably not to be considered as the roadblocks in the pursuit of adapting to ‘Cloud Computing’ platform. Every transformation has challenges that come with it, but it is for the cloud vendors to provide solutions for circumventing these challenges will determine the roadmap ahead.

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(Disclaimer: Please note no part of this blog may be copied or reused or republished or reproduced in any way, except to share using either the share feature of LinkedIn or posting a direct link to this blog. An excerpt from the blog can be quoted while sharing it in an above-mentioned manner. Any other form of reuse must be done only after obtaining an explicit written consent of the author)

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Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Digital Transformation, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’ Follow Me: Linked In      twitter Photo Credit – ShutterStock/Bluebay

In my last article, I discussed the evolution of Cloud Computing technology and how Cloud has been a paradigm shift for the Digital Transformation. Cloud provides the businesses with unheralded flexibility while offering them greater versatility and inexpensive solutions for managing the IT systems, where the technological developments are happening at a phenomenal pace and dynamic than ever before.

Cloud Computing has already permeated every facet of online activity. The burgeoning of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Connected devices are transforming the future of cloud technology. It is estimated that by 2025 the ‘Datasphere’ would grow to an incredible 163ZB, that is over a trillion gigabytes. With such an enormous amount of data being generated, the data needs to be stored somewhere which can be accessed by people. Of late, Cloud Computing has become the ideal place for data storage, both for business and personal use.

However, the future of Cloud Computing will see breathtaking innovations in the coming years which will surpass all the innovations seen so far in the following areas:

1. Everything as a Service (EaaS):

Cloud Computing sees continued growth for all its cloud-based services and solutions. Most of these services are already well established with Infrastructure, Platform, and Software as a Service (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS) all predicted to account for a more significant portion of IT expenditure. The future of cloud service landscape will be very much dominated by the behemoths such as Amazon with its AWS, Google’s service – Google Apps and Google Compute Engine (GCE), and Microsoft Azure.

2. NoOps (No Operations):

NoOps is the concept that an IT environment can become so automated and abstracted from the underlying infrastructure that there is no need for a dedicated team to manage the software-in-house. According to Google’s Chairman, Eric Schmidt, “The current day’s programming model is based on twenty-year-old processes that force developers to think about the infrastructure. The new model will allow the developers to focus on business requirements, while the cloud provider handles the infrastructure and scalability.” The more underlying technologies are abstracted, and less operational tasks are required and hence the term NoOps. The organisations will still need operations, but the focus should shift towards operating the applications and ensuring the cloud platform is meeting its SLAs, and that is a very different model than running the data centres and middleware.

3. Serverless Architecture:

Cloud Computing welcomes to a Serverless Era. Serverless computing is a Cloud Computing model in which the platform will dynamically determine and manage the allocation of required infrastructure and automatically provisions and deprovisions the infrastructure to support the application. For, e.g., Think how much time is saved when the efforts of developing and managing an infrastructure are removed from the software development lifecycle (SDLC). In today’s environment, most of the time and resources are invested in building systems that can scale and failover. Google’s serverless architecture approaches abstracts that work and gives the developer the quickest path from ideation to production, running on top of the same technology and processes Google uses to run applications like Gmail, YouTube, and others.

With Serverless Computing, the cloud instances are no longer allocated to sit idle till called upon to fuel the applications and other functions. Instead, the resources are provisioned only when a specific event occurs. In case of the event-based computing, Internet of Things (IoT), with sensor-based devices responding or communicating to triggers on the fly or when a user accesses the mobile app from his/her smartphone, virtual machines in the cloud retrieve and serve the information.

Hence, the Serverless Architecture also known as “Function as a Service” (FaaS), signifies the next big thing in the journey or the roadmap of Cloud Computing. Gartner predicts that 90% of “Serverless” deployments will occur outside the IT department’s Infrastructure and operations groups. Serverless Computing makes products reliable, scalable and economically viable. Amazon launched AWS Lambda as its first commercial serverless platform in 2014. AWS Lambda allows one to run code without provisioning or managing servers. AWS Lambda remains the most popular choice of serverless computing platform offering, compared to its competitors IBM OpenWhisk or Microsoft Azure functions.

4. Scalable Storage:

The cloud-based storage is likely to increase and become inexpensive. The normalisation of cloud storage and companies advancing towards having their Infrastructure in the cloud, there will be significant growth in the total amount of data to be stored, simultaneously with an increase in the number of service providers. According to Cisco, “The Global storage capacity will increase from 600EB to 1.1ZB in 2018, which is almost twice the available storage of 2017.” The SMBs will be able to create bespoke storage solutions to benefit from cost efficiencies of hosting it on Cloud, while the big organisations will store Big Data in the cloud for data analytics and insights which will help improve their business performances. As these innovations mature, the public cloud delivery mechanism will continue to gain momentum and make the legacy system redundant and uncompetitive.

4. Machine Learning:

According to Eric Schmidt “Google believes machine learning is the next layer of programming. Google’s goal is to make the process of data ingestion, storage, and training machine models as simple as calling an API. This APIs will allow developers to focus on creating incredible new applications without having to understand complex concepts like neural networking. Google has demonstrated its speech, sound, and image recognition services. The Google ‘Cloud Vision API’ can analyse an image and categorise its contents into thousands of categories. For example, the API can take a picture of a person and detect gender, race, and mood. It can look at the background and determine the location of the person and other relevant information about the location. It can read text within the image itself and return it to the user as metadata.”

To Summarize, the future of cloud computing will both complement and leverage technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning for problem-solving and predict outcomes for things or events that the world has not even thought about it yet.

The next-gen Cloud Computing will focus on abstracting ‘Virtual Infrastructure’ and the operational processes that come along with managing that infrastructure. Complex technologies like AI and Machine Learning will be made simple for data scientists to focus on the data and the developers will be able to enable the data scientists without having to be an expert of the underlying AI and machine learning technologies.

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(Disclaimer: Please note no part of this blog may be copied or reused or republished or reproduced in any way, except to share using either the share feature of LinkedIn or posting a direct link to this blog. An excerpt from the blog can be quoted while sharing it in an above-mentioned manner. Any other form of reuse must be done only after obtaining an explicit written consent of the author)

Follow Me: Linked In      twitter

Source:  Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)

The Cloud Computing is an Information Technology (IT) paradigm shift which enables ubiquitous or on-demand delivery of computing resources over the internet. Configurable systems, resources and advanced-level services can be rapidly provisioned with minimal management effort with the pay-as-you-use model. According to an old joke, the cloud is described as using someone else’s computer for doing your work.

Cloud Computing is revolutionizing everything in this world, right from how we live, work, communicate or manage our health. However, Cloud Computing is not a new technology buzzword and is not a new idea at all. The concept of cloud has been around for years. It is the speed with which they are rapidly transforming the business models, and efficiencies have accelerated it today and the role of the internet that has enabled the storing of the data off-site.

The primary driver for cloud adoption de facto revolves still around the traditional benefits of moving from “CapEx to an OpEx,” environment or business model. While the most critical concept in Cloud Computing is “Hyperscale.” Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have all invested and built tons of computing infrastructure, and their ‘Data Centers’ are vastly huge, way faster and efficient than those operated or could be built by most of the other companies.

These giants have rented out their computing capacity to companies and developers around the world. A company or a developer can get access to unlimited computing power by just swiping a credit card. The companies across the globe can serve many customers for less cost, less downtime, and with higher performance only by tapping into the supercomputing power of these cloud computing systems which they cannot in their own data centres. Apart from that, it helps the businesses to save significantly on IT Infrastructure costs and reduce the risks of maintenance, provides easy scalability, smart mobility for quick decision-making, immediate access to data, and better-organised of data-storage.

All the major cloud computing players offer the similar basic set of services:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): The most basic level of cloud computing which provides the customers with Virtual Servers and Storage.

Platform as a Service (PaaS): It provides set of tools and services which makes it easier for the developers to build software applications without worrying about which servers they are running their application.

Software as a Service (SaaS): It provides organisations with ready to use applications. They are a combination of cloud-based compute and storage service. It refers to applications that run in cloud-like Microsoft’s Office 365, Google”s G Suite or Salesforce’s products for sales and marketing.

Amazon got there first and sat at the top of the cloud computing mountain. “AWS invented this market.” It is grown into a mammoth of business that has generated more than $12 billion in revenue in 2017 with the single goal in mind to give customers something better than what they have, which is less expensive and that is easier to use than what they have. Amazon lacks IBM’s or Microsoft’s enormous breadth and depth in the Enterprise software expertise, AWS is not doing so yet a full-fledged IaaS + PaaS + SaaS player.

Power of incumbency”—taking the organisation’s unique expertise in technology, customer relationships, vertical industries and leveraging it into the cloud. All the major cloud players are doing this—Microsoft with platforms and Office, SAP with applications, Oracle with databases, Salesforce with CRM, but IBM might be outdoing all the others by crafting an $8-billion-plus business in which it helps its biggest customers convert their legacy systems and applications into a private-cloud or cloud-compatible environments. By doing this, IBM has regained its position as a world-class and modern enterprise-IT Vendor that offers a “cloud plus” set of business value to customers – cloud plus Watson, cloud plus AI, and cloud plus cognitive computing.

Cloud is the key enabler of digital transformation. However, today most of the organisations are not clear that in a DX business model and the future of cloud in a digital transformation economy is Hybrid Cloud and Multi-Cloud architectures that will lead the way ahead for organisations to start building fully cloud-enabled services. According to IDC, “this is what the future of the cloud will bring; Enterprises will become the cloud service providers of innovation to their marketplace.”

The “Multi-Cloud” describes an environment which relies on “Multiple Clouds” such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM, or OpenStack. For example, you may be running a workload which requires large storage and networking resources on ‘Private Cloud’, such as OpenStack. At the same time, you may have a workload that requires you to scale up or down quickly on a ‘Public Cloud,’ like AWS or Microsoft Azure. Every workload is running on the ideal cloud environment.

The key driver for the businesses to adopt Multi-Cloud Environment is Unique Needs – run workloads with high performance and for a lower cost; Legacy Applications – To avoid the pain of migrating the legacy apps to a new platform; Diversify: To prevent vendor lock-in and latency while creating redundancy. Toyota’s CIO Zack Hicks has embraced the Multi-Cloud Computing model to streamline their business and to provide their IT teams to focus on building new innovative technologies for their cars. Toyota uses various kinds of cloud apps:

Trading in Oracle’s PeopleSoft for Workday’s human-resources software

Uses Salesforce’s Chatter for social media, including Web-development projects between employees, ad agencies, and other contractors

Uses Box, the online-storage service, to distribute executive reports, instead of email or printed reports

Uses AWS to host most of its marketing websites, like Scion.com and Toyota’s environmental-information website

Uses Microsoft Azure, to host a slew of new apps that run on cars, from Facebook to an app that awards you eco-points for miles driven in an electric vehicle

Hicks says. The cloud has turned cars into the next big “connected platform, with the awesome tech coming out in our vehicle.” For example:

Semi-autonomous vehicles that can help the elderly get around

Steering wheels that “can measure your heartbeat, respiration, blood-sugar levels, and send it to a doctor”

Cars that can send an alert if a driver’s health condition has become unsafe and needs medical help

All these developments were possible since Toyota decided not to make its IT people manage emails and leveraged the resources for creating innovative and world-class transformational technologies which will revolutionize the future of Automobile Industry.

To summarize, Cloud is disrupting the traditional business model that will transform the way an organization has been doing business time immemorial. Moreover, with every change, there come new challenges. In my next article, I will be discussing in detail the Challenges and the Next-Gen Cloud Technology.

——————————————————————– (Disclaimer: Please note no part of this blog may be copied or reused or republished or reproduced in any way, except to share using either the share feature of LinkedIn or posting a direct link to this blog. An excerpt from the blog can be quoted while sharing it in an above-mentioned manner. Any other form of reuse must be done only after obtaining an explicit written consent of the author) ——————————————————————– Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Digital Transformation, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’

Follow Me: Linked In      twitter

Source:  Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)

In my last article, I discussed the history and evolution of UAVs or drones and the military use-cases. Over the past few years, there has been a paradigm shift in the adoption of drones, expansion of usage cross industries, and overall global awareness.

Drone technology is developing rapidly. Commercial entities, individuals, and governments have realized the multiple uses that UAVs or drones have, which include:

Aerial Photography for film, travel, and journalism, Shipping and Delivery, Building Surveillance for safety and inspection, Precision crop monitoring or streamlining agriculture management, Weather forecasting for tracking storm, hurricanes, and tornadoes, Wildlife Monitoring, 3D Mapping, Guided Tours, Advertising, Inventory Management, Disaster Management, Healthcare and Rescue operations, Archeological survey, Geographic Mapping, etc.

Development of hundreds of drone use-cases is underway due to investments pouring into this promising Industry as it is growing at an enormous speed. The commercial drone industry is still nascent. However, it has started to see significant investments from the industrial conglomerates, IT firms, Chip companies and the industry leaders. However, there are only a handful of early-stage drone manufacturers in the US, Asia and Europe.

In 2013, Amazon became the first organization in the world to announce their plan to use commercial drones for their delivery activities. Others followed suit since then; In 2016 Polytechnic Institue of Virginia began a test with Google’s Project Wing, owner Alphabet Inc, to create delivery of burritos made by the local Chipotle restaurant.

In the Personal Drove Industry, the market predicts a vast potential from the sale of personal drones used for photography, film-making, gaming, and recording by the tech-enthusiasts. Consumers are expected to spend $17 billion on the drones in the next few years. Drones are made in all sizes and shapes, right from small, inexpensive single rotor devices, to large $1000 and above quadcopters with GPS with first-person control and multiple camera arrays.

The integration of Internet of Things (IoT) and drones has created various use-cases for Enterprises. Right from logistics to security, to agriculture the drones and IoT offer interactivity and ubiquitous connectivity. The Future of Drone is evolving with groundbreaking and progressive transformations. “According to ‘Airdronecraze’, an Amazon Services affiliate has listed the following breakdowns of the UAVs or drone technology having seven generations and the majority of the current drone technology seems to sit in the fifth or sixth generation platforms.”

Here is the breakdown of the drone technology generations:

First Gen: Basic Remote Control aircraft of all forms.

Second Gen: Static design, fixed camera mount, video recording, still photography, and manual piloting control.

Third Gen: Static designs, two-axis gimbals, HD video, basic safety models. assisted piloting.

Fourth Gen: Transformative designs, Three-axis gimbals, 1080 HD video or higher value instrumentation, improved safety modes, autopilot modes.

Fifth Gen: Transformative designs, 360° gimbals, 4K video or higher-value instrumentation, intelligent piloting modes.

Sixth Gen: Commercial suitability, safety and regulatory standards-based design, platform and payload adaptability, automated safety modes, intelligent piloting models and full autonomy, airspace awareness.

Seventh Gen: Complete commercial suitability, fully compliant safety and regulatory standards-based design, platform and payload interchangeability, automated safety modes, enhanced intelligent piloting models and full autonomy, full airspace awareness, auto action (takeoff, land, and mission execution).

Another biggest booming market for the leaders in the drones business is the ‘Racing Drones’ a multibillion-dollar growing Industry in the world of sports. The Drone league has taken flight. According to the CEO – Nicholas Horbaczewski of Drone Racing League, is watching out for “the greatest drone racer on earth” who could be worth a lot of money.

The UAVs or Drone technology has been evolving rapidly with next-gen of Gen 7 smart drones, which are already underway. Smart Drones come with inbuilt safeguards, intelligent, accurate sensors, self-monitoring and compliance tech. It is the next most significant revolution in the UAVs or drone technology that will open up new opportunities for Commercial, Industrial and other sectors.

To summarize, the world is fast entering an era where every individual, organization, industry, and the nation will thrive on these transformational technologies such as ‘UAVs or Drone, which will change the way they live, work, and communicate in this world.

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(Disclaimer: Please note no part of this blog may be copied or reused or republished or reproduced in any way, except to share using either the share feature of LinkedIn or posting a direct link to this blog. An excerpt from the blog can be quoted while sharing it in an above-mentioned manner. Any other form of reuse must be done only after obtaining an explicit written consent of the author)

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Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Digital Transformation, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’

Follow Me: Linked In      twitter

Source:  Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)

It is the ‘Era’ of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), or Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), an all-encompassing term which includes the aircraft or the UAV, and the ground-based controller (the person operating the machine), and the system of communications connecting the two, commonly known as ‘Drones.’

Today, the drones are revolutionizing the world and businesses which hardly anyone could have ever imagined. UAVs or drones was an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. UAVs include both autonomous drones and Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs).

According to the brief history “The U.S. military experimented with pilotless aeroplanes as “aerial torpedoes” or flying bombs far back during the first world war, but with no significant success—until the Vietnam war, when jet-propelled, camera-equipped drones built by Teledyne-Ryan were launched and controlled from U.S. Air Force C-130s.

“Abraham Karem born in 1937, is regarded as the founding father of UAV (drone) technology. “Karem built his first drone during the Yom Kippur war for the Israeli Air Force. In the 1970s, he moved to the USA and founded his company Leading Systems Inc. He started the manufacturing of his first drone ‘Albatross’ in his home garage. Later on, the sophisticated ‘Amber’ which eventually evolved into the famous ‘Predator’ drone that brought him the title of “drone father”. Karem has been described by The Economist magazine as the man who “created the robotic plane that transformed the way modern warfare is waged, and at the age of 80 he continues to pioneer other airborne innovations.”

The UAVs or drones were associated with the military and those used by the US Air Force for surveillance, small intelligence, and reconnaissance craft of which some of them were light enough to be launched by hand, medium-sized armed drones to large spy planes. However, with the technology that is in use is incredibly advanced. It uses Artificial Intelligence (AI), GPS, 3D scan, Biometrics, to Robotics and remote control to pilot essentially unmanned aeroplanes of different sizes, weights, reaching new heights figuratively and literally.

Let me discuss some of the significant use-cases of the Military or Law enforcement Drones:

1. Air Strikes:

The UAVs or drones are used for air strikes. According to President Obama, the US Military used drones to attack militants in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The drones hover over the suspected areas to fulfil the military operation.

2. Bomb Detection:

The increasing frequency of terrorist attacks which the world has witnessed in the recent past can be mitigated with the help of drones. Small size drones can easily penetrate into the restricted areas. The inbuilt cameras make the drone highly suitable for bomb investigations. Thus the UAVs are apt for detecting the unexploded bombs and securely dealing with a potential bomb threat.

3. Surveillance:

Any country’s Defence tends to conduct periodic surveys to ensure the protection of the place and its people usually. The drones are also used for criminal surveillance which could help trace missing persons, a search of criminal gangs or mafia groups. In 2009, the drone from Dayton carried out surveillance for 200 hours across cities. This helped in capturing the images of thirty-four murders as they happened in real-time. These attacks were carried out by a cartel, and the footages helped the Police to get to the perpetrator’s getaway, vehicles and their various accomplices.

4. Hostage Negotiation:

The future of the drone could be an application of tiny drones, the size of an insect which will be capable of revealing the happenings in a hostile location. It is believed that the manufacturers will be able to provide ‘Biomimetic’ designs which will be suited to mimic nature along with the 3D depiction scan for appropriate handling of a hostage situation. The drone will help show precise details of exact happenings in the given locations without risking the lives of the security personnel. The drones will be of good use in conducting negotiations without the need for sending a negotiator to the hostage site. Instead, it can be achieved by sending a drone with a facility for a facetime chat with the hostage-taker.

5. Crime Scene Analysis:

Drones play a significant role in the future crime scene investigations due to the drone’s ability to take photos and inspect the scene without any contamination of the pieces of evidence. Hence, the investigation team will not risk mistakes like footprints and fingerprints which were not supposed to be there. The police also could use drones to trackback discarded weapons from the crime scene location. Drones to help create maps for prosecuting or solving various crimes and documenting the evidence to convict the criminals who have walked-out scot-free due to lack of sufficient documented proof against them.

6. Drone in Drug Interdictions or Tracing Missing Persons:

Today, drones that are equipped with spectroscopic sensors help in detection of the meth labs, and similar use case can be applied for the storage of drug at sites to help in dealing with the menace of the illegal drug trade. It is most common for some close person to have gone missing. There have been several cases when a child has gone missing in a large crowd, or a person with Alzheimer disease has wandered from home. The drones equipped with cameras, facial recognition or license plate readers software will be able to swiftly and efficiently search and track the missing people. These drones will transform the way the future search operations of the missing people are conducted.

Military usage of UAVs or drones has become the primary use in today’s world. According to Goldman Sachs, military spending will remain the primary driver of drone spending with an estimate of $70 billion drones by 2020. According to the latest news, “The US Military’s latest autonomous aircraft is radically changing how they resupply units in the combat zone. It is all about keeping the troops safe and saving lives. The UAV helicopter is meant to resupply forces in combat zones quickly delivering ammunition, water, batteries, and even blood before returning to base. With no need for pilot or crew, it could eliminate the need for troops to fly or drive supplies to hostile, fire or dangerous roadways. The project is a partnership between the office of Naval research and tech company Aurora Flight Systems.”

These are some of the use-cases of the Military or Law-Enforcement UAVs or Drones which I have discussed here. However, in my next couple of articles, I will be addressing the Non-military or Commercial, Personal and Future use-cases of the UAVs or Drones that has disrupted and transforming the world.

To conclude, the drones will play a vital role in the resolution of future conflicts and the replacement of the human pilot. Drones are also cost-effective, time-saving and life-changing. Although, the application of drones in the Law-Enforcement domain is niche but will need the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) to have the relevant regulations which would govern the right use of ‘UAVs or Drones’ in a lawful manner that will bring protection to the people and its nation.

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(Disclaimer: Please note no part of this blog may be copied or reused or republished or reproduced in any way, except to share using either the share feature of LinkedIn or posting a direct link to this blog. An excerpt from the blog can be quoted while sharing it in an above-mentioned manner. Any other form of reuse must be done only after obtaining an explicit written consent of the author)

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Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Digital Transformation, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’

Follow Me: Linked In      twitter

Source:  Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)

The revolution of digital technology has disrupted and transformed the entire Media Industry. The evolution of print to online media has significantly impacted the individual, business, society, and nation overall. The digitization has changed the judicious “decision-making” capability of an individual which can make or break something powerful in this world.

The advent of the Internet and transformational technologies have redefined the way we gather, receive and consume the news today. During the Pre-Internet era, it was challenging to get international or even national information without the Newspaper which slowly evolved to Radio, Television, and Social-Media.

With time, ‘Time’ became the most significant challenge which a man is always battling especially in the fast-paced mechanical world. This challenge paved the way for one of the biggest business opportunity for Media Industry in the world. Mobility became the future, and with this development, the media rapidly advanced itself in the era of social-media by providing online-news via apps which led to the decline of the print-media businesses.

However, the ever-growing influence of online social media gave birth to the ‘Fake News or Yellow Journalism which refers to journalism that provides little or no legitimate or well-researched news. Instead, they present headlines story that is eye-catching and sell more newspapers. The media and all other superpowers in the Industry who wanted to manipulate adopted methods such as exaggerations of news-events, sensationalism, scandal-mongering, deliberate hoaxes or misinformation via print and broadcast news media or online social media.

The fake news is published or written with the explicit intention of misleading to damage the reputation of an entity, agency or a person, and or to gain politically or financially, often using outright fabricated headlines to increase readership, coverage, online sharing, internet click revenues or any hidden business motivations.

To top it all the technology has proven advantageous to players in the ‘Fake News.’ The ‘Bots’ are designed with the intelligence and robotic power to perform any automated task without human intervention. In the case of online media, they are programmed to gather and collate ‘Fake News’ that could make or break any business, people, society or a nation.

Let us take the recent case of 2016 US presidential election, according to the CBS News the stories which consistently featured in Google’s top news search results were widely shared on the Facebook and they were taken seriously by the readers. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, made a statement, “I think the idea that fake news on Facebook influenced the election in any way, I think is a pretty crazy idea.” A few days later, he blogged that Facebook was looking for ways to flag the fake news stories. Angela Merkel expressed her concern by discussing the topic on Fake News and Bots which can manipulate public opinion is committed not to use social bots for her campaign strategy.

However, demonizing bots might cause society from overlooking the possibility of using the same bots for the good of mankind. Be it a Bot or Chatbot it can be the optimal tools for eliminating the fake news from the system. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI), the bots can be programmed only to collate legitimate news whose data source has been validated. Apart from eliminating the rudimentary system of reporting, the ‘AI Bot or Chatbot’ will automate the entire online news reporting system and slowly eradicate the yellow journalism from its roots.

To summarize, the ‘Media Industry’ should collaborate with Technologists and Subject Matter Expertise for designing and developing AI Bots that can bring in the Next-Gen online news reporting system which will be instrumental in eliminating the ‘Fake News’ from the system and help establish people’s trust back in the power of the Social Media. More importantly, reinstating the judicious decision-making capability of an individual.

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(Disclaimer: Please note no part of this blog may be copied or reused or republished or reproduced in any way, except to share using either the share feature of LinkedIn or posting a direct link to this blog. An excerpt from the blog can be quoted while sharing it in an above-mentioned manner. Any other form of reuse must be done only after obtaining an explicit written consent of the author)

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Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Digital Transformation, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’

Follow Me: Linked In      twitter

Source:  Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)

The Blockchain is the invisible technology that is revolutionizing the future of the world economy. Big Corporations are racing to build Blockchain platforms for harnessing the digital transformation across industries and businesses. The Blockchain is a digitized, decentralized, distributed, and incorruptible public ledger of all economic transactions or digital assets that are recorded in chronological order within a worldwide network called “Peer-to-Peer (P2P) of distributed “nodes” or computers.

In a nutshell, the key advantages of a blockchain are Transparency, Authentication, and Auditing which eliminates the existence of the “Intermediaries”. This paradigm shift has led major financial institutions and tech giants to drive innovations using blockchain technology for developing various use-cases that can be adopted by several other industries. There have been prototypes that are being tested for its viability and adaptability in the regulated economy.

Despite these advantages, the blockchain technology has its major drawback, and I would like to highlight the most significant concerns which I foresee if this technology were to become the future of all the business operations.

Firstly, the ‘digital assets’ are still a non-regulated mode of the transaction even if it is built on the blockchain platform. The ever-growing size of the blockchain is considered a challenge for it is causing issues around storage and synchronization. This phenomenal growth of the cryptocurrencies over the last few years are mind-blowing and are un-regulated. Today the Governments are backing out of it. Countries like China, Japan, Russia, Korea and Israel have shut-down the cryptocurrency exchanges and withdrawn their support for the digital assets since the Government is unable to figure out how to regulate this system.

Having Regulation is critical; the reason being, even if the digital assets under the blockchain records and maintains the transaction history, yet they do not reveal the identity of the individuals who do the transactions. Just maintaining the data does not mean the Government is aware of the individual’s financial status and therefore the regulative authority has no control over the system. For, e.g., Until recently the Swiss Bank would not disclose the details of individuals who have an account with them. India had requested access to this data. In Nov 2017, “The Commission for Economic Affairs and Taxes of the Council of States — a key panel of the Swiss Parliament’s Upper House approved the proposed pact with India as also with 40 other countries. The pact will help provide continuous access to details about alleged black money hoarders in once-all-secret Swiss banks and will help check cross-border tax evasion.” However, this access only starts from 2018, which means the details of the old accounts might not even be available.

Independent computers or nodes in the blockchain network are maintaining the records which are neither available to the public nor the regulative authorities. This becomes the most significant cause of concern in the system. The blockchain platform will only be able to provide security to that individual who is doing the transaction allowing the bubble for the black money in the market. Let us take the case of US Federal Reserve or the Reserve Bank of India or the Bank of England. They have no access to the transactions that are happening right under their nose in the computers and on the blockchain network, these banks are unable to track the volume and value of cross-border transactions that are taking place and the amount of money that has gone out of their countries.

The unregulated growth of the cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technologies are causing havoc in the system. There may be certain disruptive forces in this world like the dictators or terrorists who will be able to do transactions without the knowledge of the regulative authorities that are illegal and giving rise to the enormous growth of black money in the market. In Nov 2017, news emerged that Russian president Vladimir Putin had approved a plan to create an independent Internet by 1 August 2018, first reported by the Russian news agency, RT. The alternate Internet would be used by BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—and shield them from “possible external influence,” The “backup” servers would be placed in BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa – and be exclusively for their use. The rationale for setting up such a system is, according to the document, “the increased capabilities of western countries to carry out offensive operations in the information space, and their willingness to use them. Hence Russia wants to abstain its people and country from succumbing to any unregulated mode of business operations and also protect their systems from being hacked by the cybercriminals.

Hence it becomes extremely critical for Government and regulative authorities to monitor the financial dealings that are happening in their respective countries and ensure there is no illegal and unaccounted money in the form of digital assets. In India; the Cryptocurrencies appear to be living up to their cryptic reputation. According to the latest news report, “The Indian Government has sent tax notices to about 5 lakh high net-worth individuals (HNIs) who own bitcoins or any other cryptocurrency worth more than $3.5 billion trades and transactions in a 17 month period. Indian officials suspect that the cryptocurrency traders are evading taxes. The income tax department may also find it difficult to figure out whether these wealthy investors hold any cryptocurrencies or the income earned from these instruments. The department may also struggle to calculate the capital gains tax on bitcoins as investors have used complex investment strategies. Some also claim that they have never bought any cryptocurrency, or that their accounts may have been hacked a few years ago. The tax department is investigating the source of income and whether money invested in bitcoins or any other cryptocurrency is from money laundering,”

Let us now take the following use-cases to understand the gap in the blockchain technology:

1. Supply Chain Management:

In a typical scenario the supplier, manufacturer and the distributor will be able to authenticate the transaction along the way. As a customer, they can have full transparency with the authentication and confidence that the life story of that product or goods is legitimate. How will the regulatory authorities in the respective countries come to know how much cash transactions have been undertaken?

However, let us take the case of a company ‘X’ is manufacturing its phone in China and distributing the same across countries in the region. All their transactions are being done on the Private blockchain to protect the sales figures from their competitors. If the payment is being made via cryptocurrency, then all these business transactions will open the world for a “Black Economy” since it is not coming under the vision of any regulative authorities. Despite being a private blockchain, it still encourages the growth of black money in the market. People with sufficient computing power can manipulate the system. This mode of business dealing will give rise to the businesses eliminating the intermediaries and all the taxes and other legitimate duties/levies associated with that particular business and transaction. This flaw in the technology poses a significant concern for future economic growth. How will the country or nation run without them being able to collect the taxes and other duties from the respective business operations across the sectors?

2. Financial Institutions:

The banks can transact millions of transactions on these private blockchain networks. Assume there is a bank which would like to operate in the grey market like the bullion market; they definitely can do and disclose the transaction details from the world. Some Erring banks in the world maintain nefarious records of nefarious people and may not share the details with the regulative authorities. What happens in such scenarios? For eg: According to the news report on the most significant scandal in the Panama Papers leak,”The world’s biggest businesses, heads of state and global figures in politics, entertainment and sport who have sheltered their wealth in secretive tax havens are being revealed this week in a major new investigation into Britain’s offshore empires.The details come from a leak of 13.4m files stolen from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed just how unequal the world is. It exposes the global environments in which tax abuses can thrive – and the complex and seemingly artificial ways the wealthiest corporations can legally protect their wealth.”

In a blockchain, one can validate the transaction details but cannot identify the person who has done the transactions may be a year ago if the person has withdrawn the money and gone away eliminating his entire profile. This can be explained by the example from the 2008 most significant financial crisis of all times in the US by the Lehman Brothers with over $639 billion in assets and $619 billion in debt, Lehman’s demise also made it the largest victim of the U.S. subprime-mortgage-induced financial crisis that swept through global financial markets in 2008. The rest is history and left the US Regulative authority with no record of the people who were involved in these transactions. Hence the involvement of the regulatory authorities is exceptionally crucial because at the end of the day it still translates into finance or money which needs to be monitored and tracked by an authorised system. Anyone with muscle power can tamper or manipulate the system.

Therefore Blockchain is a not a fool-proof technology as there is a massive gap in the system. The blockchain technology only allows an individual to see the transaction details, but it cannot identify the perpetrators. In the recent report by RT, “Researchers found that a single actor was “likely” behind several accounts that bought millions of dollars worth of bitcoin and drove the exchange rate in the US from $150 to $1,000 over the course of two months. In a paper published in a recent issue of the Journal of Monetary Economics, a team of researchers examined the impact of fraudulent activity that occurred on the leading bitcoin currency exchange in 2013 and found that a single actor was “likely” behind a massive spike in exchange rates.In their paper, “Price Manipulation in the Bitcoin Ecosystem,” the researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel and the University of Tulsa examined Mt. Gox transactions over a ten-month period from February to November 2013, and found that approximately 600,000 bitcoins, valued at $188 million, were “acquired by agents who likely did not pay for the bitcoins.”

Hence the intermediaries such as Financial Institutions and Government Regulative Authorities cannot be eliminated. Adoption of Blockchain technology by the Industry needs to be regulated on ‘Government Regulated Domains’ by the regulative authorities of the Federal Governments. If not it can create a Hydra Monster and can have their own currency just like the monopoly game currency which will impact the Socio-Economic well-being of the nation.

To conclude, I did like to ask the Industry Stakeholders, Technologists, Researchers, Scientists, and Subject Matter Experts to share thoughts/comments/feedback regarding this challenge in blockchain technology and how will this gap in the technology be addressed?

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(Disclaimer: Please note no part of this blog may be copied or reused or republished or reproduced in any way, except to share using either the share feature of LinkedIn or posting a direct link to this blog. An excerpt from the blog can be quoted while sharing it in an above-mentioned manner. Any other form of reuse must be done only after obtaining an explicit written consent of the author)

———————————————————————————————–

Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Digital Transformation, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’

Follow Me: Linked In      twitter

Source:  Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)

Internet of Things (IoT) and Automation are disrupting and revolutionizing the retail Industry. CES 2018 unveiled significant advancements in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. These groundbreaking transformations will create a paradigm shift in the world of retail and how we shop.

The concept of conventional grocery stores and supermarkets have taken a big hit with the advent of IoT, and online retail is continuing to thrive in the golden era of digitization. The burgeoning of the Intelligent technologies is leading the world towards Automation.

The Internet of Shopping (IoS) is the future, where the supermarkets will need no human intervention in managing it. The Sci-fi supermarket will use AI to study, analyze, and map the consumer behaviour and the buying patterns. The sensors will map the moment customer the moment he/she walks-in, in any one of the retail chain’s outlets at every location. Using multimodel biometric, the face recognition, fingerprints, iris recognition, retina, voice, rhythm, gait, gesture, etc. are already mapped and is recorded in the system.

As a customer, I will use my mobile app to scan at the entrance and head into the store. When I walk through the aisle, a list is triggered on my app leading me to the sections where I need to pick up my stuff. My ‘Smart Refrigerator sends the shopping list as soon the stock reaches its threshold or is completely exhausted. The ‘ConnectedWorld’ enables the communication between all the devices or things which I can monitor and control via the Smart Phone.

The Moment I start to pick-up the products and place it in my shopping cart or the trolley, the smart trolley records the products chosen by its RFID or Barcode tags. The products also get marked in the app’s virtual shopping cart and if I were to decide against buying any one or more products before the check-out or leaving the store the software is enabled to remove them automatically from its memory which is powered by the advanced AI technology.

Finally, I just walk out of the store with all my purchases and the payment is processed through the app which is linked to my bank account, and this payment system is facilitated using either the latest billing applications or via the Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.

This concept of the Internet of Shopping (IoS) is no longer a ‘Virtual Reality’ but is a ‘Reality’. Amazon has launched the first-ever “Automated Grocery” Store in the US which is Checkout-Free and Shopping might feel like shoplifting. Customers can walk in, pick what they want, and exit while being monitored by hundreds of sophisticated system of cameras and electronic sensors following people’s movements and recording all the products they chose. Amazon Go’s “Just Walk Out” technology automatically charges its customers for the products in their shopping bags.

Similarly, in China, a company called BingGo box has already launched over two hundred “Cashier’less” stores across twenty-nine cities in 2016, which sell beverages, snacks, and other items just like the ‘7 Eleven’ in Singapore. However, China’s wave of automated or unmanned outlets comprises more than just shopping, Karaoke booths, Restaurants, and Mini Gyms. However, China is both ahead and behind Amazon in this revolution of “Cashier-Less” Stores.

To summarize, On one side the digital transformation in the retail industry is a significant breakthrough and on the other had it has posed a serious threat and growing insecurity for people eventually losing their jobs to the ever-growing ‘Automation.’ How is the Industry stakeholders going to address the rising unemployment in the world of the retail industry due to Automation?

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(Disclaimer: Please note no part of this blog may be copied or reused or republished or reproduced in any way, except to share using either the share feature of LinkedIn or posting a direct link to this blog. An excerpt from the blog can be quoted while sharing it in an above-mentioned manner. Any other form of reuse must be done only after obtaining an explicit written consent of the author)

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Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Digital Transformation, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’

Follow Me: Linked In      twitter

Source:  Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)

Here’s Wishing you a Very Happy, Smart, and Innovative New Year!

Internet of Things (IoT) has been revolutionizing the world with its millions of innovations. In 2017 IoT reached its milestone by creating several break-throughs with significant technological advancements. All of these technologies, products, and solutions saw the limelight at the world’s largest and the most powerful technology event, Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2018 at Las Vegas, a Catalyst for Innovations.

The vision of the Internet of Things (IoT) is to transform the way individual lives, work and communicates with one another. These innovations are meant to simplify by offering products and solutions that are simple, affordable, easy to use, efficient and productive for building a Smart, Safe and Connected world.

With these above IoT goals in mind, I am personally impressed to highlight some of these mind-boggling innovative products and solutions that was unveiled last week at the CES 2018.

1. Forever Batteries:

The battery maker Ossia launched its AA-sized batteries that suck power out of the air using its IP technology called Cota. Ossia has developed a means of wireless power transmission which Ossia claims can keep the AA battery charged up or provide power to a smartphone that either incorporates Cota’s technology natively or uses specific charging case. However, Ossia hasn’t revealed much about the working of their Cota technology. This irreplaceable battery will eliminate the spending expenditure ‘Forever’.

2. Byton’s $45,000 Gadgeted Electric Smart Car:

Chinese Start-up unveiled its first and futuristic real smart electric car. The name refers to ‘Bytes on Wheels.’ Former BMW and Apple Engineers created it. It has the hardware on board to enable full self-driving mode. The vision behind Byton is to be the company to bring to the market the first real ‘Smart’ car. Inside the car, the drivers and passengers can interact with the huge display panel. Byton aims to merge an individual’s life outside the car with the experience inside the vehicle. Everything will be controlled via the touch, and certain aspects will be controlled via voice (voice recognition by Amazon’s Alexa) and gesture control. The key is customisation. When the car is in drive mode, specific features will be disabled. It will not allow watching videos for instance. Byton aims to build a platform where, when there is autonomous driving all occupants of the car including the driver can interact. Some of the features of Byton will be fully-disabled until we live in a world of fully autonomous driving. Fierce competition to Tesla and from my perspective it is redefining life. But the one challenge that might stump Byton is the lack of fast-charging stations. Another major competitor to watch for will be Fisker’s EMotion a luxury smart autonomous sports sedan. Although Fisker is not a competition concerning the price factor; however, is a competitor to watch for its technology and new solid-state battery which they filed for a patent. The battery is expected to provide the Electric Vehicles with a range of over 500 miles on a single charge and will take only one minute for recharging.

3. Razer’s SmartPhone Laptop – Project Linda:

Razer brings you a disruption in the world of gaming with its Project Linda which is a concept of ultraportable laptop design powered by the Android-based Razer Phone. The docked phone serves as an intelligent touchpad, bridging the gap between handheld entertainment and laptop convenience. The Razer Phone’s display, performance, and dual front-firing speakers combine seamlessly with Linda’s keyboard, larger screen, and battery to provide ultimate mobile hybrid setup for creativity, gaming, and productivity. Although the Project Linda feels like a product from a Sci-fi world or a future that might not see the daylights after the CES 2018. However, the prototypes like a concept car for gadgets is both sensational and aspirational. Razer hasn’t confirmed if it plans to make the smartphone project Linda for a go-to-market next year.

4. Google Voice Assistant:

Google creates a whirlwind at the CES 2018 with its Voice Assistants and predicts to dominate the future homes. Lilian Rincon, Google director of product management, reckons customers making their home “smart” by using the Assistant to turn on lights, boil the kettle and do other tasks could save 15 minutes from their morning routine. Google’s Voice Assistant is eroding the well established Amazon’s Alexa, a fierce competitor for its voice assistant. Google has already discussed partnerships with various Industry verticals for integrating their Voice Assistant in realizing the goal of “Smart and Connected World.” In my opinion, I see this as the most significant breakthrough as Google is not charging the end-user but is working with all its third-party vendors to integrate the voice assistant into their products and solutions. Google showed off a plethora of new Voice Assistant-enabled devices from companies like Lenovo, Sony and LG, featuring “smart displays” that displays information like the schedules, things-to-do, cooking recipes, and other bits of visual accoutrement whenever we ask the Assistant for something. Also, you’ll find Assistant integration inside more televisions, headphones — even in new cars, thanks to Android Auto, which is already available in more than 400 car models. The Assistant integration eliminates the need for having an independent device and allows you to manage everything from your one device – ‘The SmartPhone.’

5. Smart Hearing-Aids EARGO Max:

Technology for healthcare and especially the elderly is something I am very much interested though tech for elderly-care is still a growing area. The ageing population is a growing business opportunity, and EARGO Max might be the airpods of hearing aids. The hearing-aids have a collection of useful features, the most stand-out of which is a complete lack of need for expensive replaceable batteries. The set of hearing aids includes Dynamic Noise Reduction, with Eargo tech which allows the devices to vary noise reduction based on environment. When the environment gets louder, noise reduction ramps up. These devices also change based on user preference. The “Flexi Fibers” hold the hearing aids in place, while the domes “increase the amount of ambient bass sounds and eliminate feedback. I understand very well how useful and life-changing these features are since my mother suffers from major hearing loss and will benefit her tremendously. However, the one road-block I see is the cost factor. Currently, Eargo Max is priced at $2,500 which I believe is quite too high and defeats the purpose of providing cost-effective and affordable products. Hoping to see the Industry ramping up to address this gap.

To summarize, CES 2018 was a curtain raiser for millions of products, solutions, and technologies which created hope for a future that is beyond imagination. In my opinion, there is still a long way for the Industry stakeholders to meet the primary objectives of IoT which will redefine this entire universe. The one vertical which has gone mainstream is the Autonomous Vehicles or the Self-driving cars. The major tech giants such as Cisco, Nvidia, Intel, Amazon, Google, Tesla, Apple, GM, Toyota, and many others made announcements focusing their investments in this sector.

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(Disclaimer: Please note no part of this blog may be copied or reused or republished or reproduced in any way, except to share using either the share feature of LinkedIn or posting a direct link to this blog. An excerpt from the blog can be quoted while sharing it in an above-mentioned manner. Any other form of reuse must be done only after obtaining an explicit written consent of the author)

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Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Digital Transformation, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’

Follow Me: Linked In      twitter

Source:  Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)

The World Economic Forum (WEF) 2018 in the Swiss Alpine town of Davos welcomes its Global Elite with a deep freeze weather for the 48th-year mega annual conference, the World Leaders, Billionaires, Industrialists, Business Tycoons, Investors, Religious Leaders, Entrepreneurs, and other Thought Leaders to network, collaborate and share ideas for addressing the burning issues in the era of “Economic Globalization.”

This year’s WEF theme is “Creating Shared Future in a Fractured World’, and the most significant topic of discussion is to address “Inequality.” Above all the extraordinary spectacle of this year in the history of WEF is not PM Modi or President Trump, but The “Co-Chairs” of the Annual meeting are all “Women” representing Corporates, NGOs and Politics namely, Isabelle Kocher – CEO, ENGIE Group; Chetna Sinha – Founder and Chair, Mann Deshi Foundation; Erna Solberg – Prime Minister of Norway; Fabiola Gianotti – Director-General, CERN; Christine Lagards – MD, IMF; Sharan Burrow – General Secretary, ITUC; Ginni Rometty – Chairman, President and CEO, IBM Corporation.

Amidst all these usual hypes and spotlight, the stardom caught my attention, Shahrukh Khan, receiving the Humanitarian or the Crystal Award at the WEF 2018. He was honoured for championing the Women’s and Children’s rights in India and his efforts to rehabilitate the acid attack survivors through his Non-profit organization called Meer Foundation. It left me speechless when he attributed his efforts and thanked the ‘Women’ in life – his sister, wife, and daughter for teaching him the value of requesting, sometimes imploring or even begging a yes from a woman instead of forcing it upon her. Today more men are openly talking about valuing and giving the woman her respect and position that she holds and deserves in the society.

Adding to my excitement is yet another leap made by breaking the stigma of inequality. ‘Rachel Morrison’ will be the first ever woman nominee in the history of Oscars in the best cinematography category to be nominated for her work on Mudbound creating a historic moment in the 90th Annual Academy Awards Ceremony that will be hosted in March.

In the world of corporate, the CEO of Google ‘Sundar Pichai’ fired one of his top scientists – James Damore for writing an internal memo that criticized the tech giant for becoming an “Ideological Echo Chamber” for creating a technical, engineering and leadership with a higher number of women whose psychological differences can sustain. Today, more than ever before as a career woman it is reassuring that I can aspire to grow the corporate ladder with such kinds transformations happening across the board and organizations.

In the history of Indian Cinema in Bollywood, there is an upcoming movie releasing on Feb 4th, 2018 called “Pad Man.” This movie will be the world’s first film on ‘Menstrual Hygiene’. Inspired by the real-life story of ‘Arunachalam Muruganantham, a social activist from Tamil Nadu who became the first man to wear a sanitary napkin and break the taboo. He invented the world’s first machine for making low-cost sanitary pads and revolutionized the mensural health for rural Indian women by providing hygienic pads at a minimal cost to all the poor women across India. A man who took the lead in understanding the unspoken sufferings of a woman and created a ground-breaking transformation which in a Patriarchal society like India is commendable. When Malala Yousafzai promoted the movie holding a sanitary pad in the streets of London, it infuriated and caused furore amongst people who expressed their displeasure at the open display of sanitary pads and talking about a subject which has and is still being considered taboo by the people in our society who are still of the ancient mindset.

Despite, all these breakthroughs we are still in a society where rapes are inevitable. According to a recent incident in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, a gang of four men raped the woman at gunpoint in front of her husband and three months old infant who was held, hostage. Alternatively, take the latest case of Larry Nassar who has been sentenced by the court to 40 to 175 years for sex crimes against female athletes. The reason I am highlighting these stories here is to say that we women are still living in a world where men look upon a woman as the object of ‘Sex.’

To summarize, although the world is getting progressive by the day, we still have a long way to go in addressing the gender biases and sexual harassments. I would like to shout out to all the great leaders especially the “Men” to continue to be the pillar of strength and support to the women in this world. I feel proud that first-time in the history of WEF, the male leaders spoke about the women, and here I am an ambitious woman who is passionate about the technology and is interested in working for great corporations to make a difference in this world. So kindly do give me an opportunity to prove myself in this world.

Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Digital Transformation, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’

Follow Me: Linked In      twitter

Source:  Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)

In my last article, I discussed the benefits of the Internet of Things (IoT) for Healthcare Industry and its transformations. However, despite all the breakthroughs and innovations, the IoT technology has its limitations and challenges. Let me address the significant problems which the IoT in the healthcare industry is facing today:

1. Data Security and Privacy:

The most significant concern and threat which the IoT technology is posing in general and in the healthcare industry is the security of personal information of the patient. By intent and design, IoT devices capture and transmit the data in real-time on the cloud for data analytics. The infrastructure for receiving and processing the data should be built and designed for scalability to collect, process, and store the real-time data from millions of devices for analytical models for deriving insights. However, most of the IoT devices that receive the data suffer lack of data protocols and standards. Besides, there is also significant ambiguity that shrouds the data ownership regulations and issues of privacy. The patient data collected via various connected devices or wearables are susceptible and precious to the cybercriminals who can exploit the stolen data or information for medical identity theft or blackmail. A hacker or criminal can use a patient’s data to create a fake ID or to buy drugs or medical equipment which can be resold. The cybercriminals also can file for fraudulent insurance claims in the patient’s name.

The technology vendors, device manufacturers, hospitals and other stakeholders should take proactive measures to ensure that their environments are secured and unhackable. The hospitals and other healthcare vendors should be extremely discerning when purchasing “devices or things” for healthcare especially the devices which the hospitals need to adopt. Given these limitations in the IoT technology, the Hospitals and the IT vendors should address the best mode of hosting the vast and complex infrastructure. I have addressed this challenge in my article on “Intranet of Things” providing the solution to tackle the Data Security and Privacy related issues. Please refer to my article here.

2. Natural Calamities:

Natural disasters in general causes major adverse event resulting in damage to infrastructures, property, and loss of life leaving significant economic damages disrupting the lives of the people. The ability to recover depends on the resilience of the affected population and also the infrastructure, medical-aid, and other assistance available depending upon the severity of the damage caused by hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, wildfires, etc.

In the event of such calamities, the potential for multiple casualties rise, and there is a great need for the medical-care for both patients with minor illnesses and injury as well as patients with chronic medical conditions and major injuries where the existing healthcare infrastructure might have been incapacitated. For, e.g., during a volcanic eruption, the number of fatalities exceeds usually the ones with injuries.

During such natural disaster, the hospitals and health systems face closure, damaged or destroyed physical assets and displaced patients and workforces. The after-effects of the event are chaotic; systems face capital limitations, downtime in the operations, credit downgrades, etc. Disruption in the pharmaceutical supply chains due to dysfunction in the manufacturing leading to shortages in the labour, products and lab testing problems.

The physical damage of the disaster may be abandoned facilities due to destroyed infrastructure. The damaged hospital buildings and assets become the target of theft. Repairs lag, and Insurance claims move very slowly. In case of the recent Florida hurricane, there was extensive damage to the infrastructures, power lines and poles resulting in power outages which could easily last for several days disrupting the entire ecosystem and bringing the whole city to a standstill condition.

3. Cost:

Has IoT has become the cure for rising healthcare costs? Let us understand how the affordability or the cost factor pose a severe challenge for IoT in healthcare. Today the rising cost of healthcare continues to dominate the industry more than ever before. The technological advancements with IoT have not proven to offset the growing costs of medical care; on the contrary, it has become more expensive.

Today the world is rapidly evolving to adapt itself to the digital transformation and connected world. The complexities of implementing the IoT technology and solutions has led many organizations to reconsider their business, delivery, and support models. With the advent of IoT, the affordability of the advanced medical care is still out of reach by an average and or low-income group individual. Even in developed economies, the cost of a good healthcare is always a big challenge. This challenge in the healthcare industry has given rise to the thriving ‘Medical Tourism’ in which the patients with the critical medical condition are availing the similar treatments at the 1/10th of the cost in the developing countries.

The IoT in healthcare has created a booming opportunity for the wearable device manufacturers. However, the cost factor remains a big question which the Industry stakeholders are yet to address. The IoT in healthcare if not made affordable to everyone from my perspective will not make sense to the vision of IoT technology.

To Summarize, I recommend the Industry stakeholders in working together to make the IoT in healthcare safe, secure, and cost-effective which then can be availed by everyone and making the vision of IoT in Healthcare a reality by creating the Smart City and Smart Nation a dream come true.

“Health is Wealth” – This being my last article for the year and hope to bounce back with much more in the coming New Year. I Thank each one of you for reading my article and giving your continuous feedback and looking forward to taking your continued support as always!

I Wish Everyone a Very Happy New Year 2018! May the New Year bring you good health, wealth and happiness. May the IoT in Healthcare thrive and make significant leaps in adoption and successful implementations.

Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Digital Transformation, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’

Follow Me: Linked In      twitter

Source:  Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)

Image: Freepik

The Internet of Things (IoT) prognostication is everywhere, and IoT is disrupting the way we live, work, and communicate. Smart Homes is unraveling the culture of convenience and a seamless life. Gartner forecast approximately 20 billion IoT enabled devices, while IDC predicts a $1.7 trillion IoT market globally by 2020.

The idea of home automation or smart homes is not new. In 1923, a Swiss-born Architect Le Corbusier described a house as “a machine for living in.” Since that time, researchers have seen umpteen attempts to make this vision into a reality, and in most scenarios, the adoption was limited due to the mindset of “To do it yourself” enthusiasts.

The IoT is all about connectedness and the things around us talking to each other through sensors. Right from our coffee-maker, refrigerator, air-conditioners, thermostats, to our cars, the sprinkler system, to computers, smartphones to our home lights, windows, to the water system and you name it. A universe where all these devices are constantly communicating and controlled remotely via a simple push of a button or via voice command. With the rapid advancements in IoT, it is possible to achieve this level of automation in the Smart and Connected Home, a dream that has become a reality.

The advent of IoT has brought a paradigm-shift in transforming people’s lives and work cultures. The next-gen growth engines are substantially affecting the entire national and international ecosystem of Industries and people. The key drivers of IoT are ease of use, efficiency, and productivity for building a Smart Citizen, a Smart Society, a Smart City, and a Smart Nation.

The early adopters of Smart Home technology solutions and products are undoubtedly the younger generation or the Millennials who have a better imagination for a smart world. On the other hand, the older generation is grounded in their real-life application. This is also due to the limited education or the knowledge among the older consumers. The term IoT is mostly unfamiliar, but the idea of things being smart is a concept which most understands felt they were already experiencing it in their daily life.

In the present-day scenario of the smart home, the environment is, on an average, one in four internet users in the USA owns an intelligent home device or product – internet connected smart doorbell or a garage door, to a smart refrigerator or a smart meter. Even an internet connected home security alarm system.

The factors that motivate the consumers to purchase a smart device or product are the following: 1. Safety 2. Savings 3. Convenience 4. Control and Monitor. However, many barriers are preventing the adoption of the smart home automation by the mass-market despite being the developed economies such a US. While the adoption of the smart homes in the developing economies such as India or China will take a decade to get there.

The challenges are many but the significant barriers preventing the mass-market smart home automation are Safety & Security, High device or solution prices, lack of knowledge, the Generation gap, lack of education & training, lack of Privacy, etc. technological fragmentation of the smart home ecosystem where the consumers require multiple networking devices, apps and more to develop and run their smart home.

Despite all the challenges that the industry is posing, several stellar IoT smart home devices have already hit the market and paved way to penetrate into the homes of the thousands of consumers across the globe. Products like Amazon Echo is the first recognizable name within this space. The device acts as the central hub for all other smart home gadgets that you may have. Its voice-activated assistance, Alexa makes it convenient by reading you, today’s headlines or biggest stories so that you can focus on cooking the dinner while still being able to catch up with the News.

Nest, one of the another most popular smart home devices in the line, a learning thermostat which can automatically adjust temperatures based on your location. It uses a far-field sensor to determine the time and temperature from a distance. Its recent update allows it now to work with Alexa too. The August Smart Lock provides enhanced security and safety for home, and it is easy to install, works with Siri via Apple HomeKit. Likewise, for Smart bulbs, there is the Philips Hue Wireless dimming kit for your white-light needs or Led bulbs for power saving. There’s also the Lifx Color 1000, which can change color as required by you.

The Smart Home market is swarming with products and solutions that are unimaginable, and with every passing day, hundreds of such innovative products are making their way. The first and obvious benefit of Smart Homes is Convenience, as more connected devices will be able to handle more operations (lighting, temperature, monitoring, etc.) and free up the individual to perform other activities. Apart from this they conserve energy and help reduce costs.

For example, If you would like to conserve energy you would want to ensure that the air conditioners are turned off when you aren’t home which will reduce consumption of energy and lower your electricity bill. This is not just for one device that I am referring but for all your devices at home that requires being powered.

To create a proper functioning of any Smart Home their is a need for the best kind of root infrastructure. The home network is a large mesh-like system which connects all and various appliances in your home, from refrigerators, to toasters, to air conditioners, to washing-machine, etc. which depends upon your requirements, you might consider having more than one home network required for powering your smart home.

There are a variety of intelligent home network technologies to select from, wireless and wired and wired and wireless, each with its pros and cons. Besides, the home network, you will need a smart home hub which acts as a central communication system between the different devices within your network and authenticates you to give commands for the device to take action. The Smart Hub functions as the brain of your Smart Home Automation System which allows you to connect your devices or things within your network to a single control center making it a secured environment.

The Security which is one of the most significant concerns can be further enhanced by having your own secure Intranet or Virtual Private Network. Please refer to my article on how the “Intranet of Things” addresses this security concern by having an internal VPN which is not connected to the external network protecting my privacy and security of data. Nevertheless, the other factors which govern the decision of consumer adoption are the individual preferences and desires around the smart home products, and devices demonstrate looming confusion for the consumer. It is not necessarily the most-valued features, or value proposition are often the real drivers of importance – Some might be mere necessities while others might be just table stakes which makes it difficult for the consumers to be able to articulate what features or functions that are genuinely novel or valuable.

To summarize, the consumers do value the benefits of Smart Home solutions, but the future of “Smart Connected Homes” constitute significant roadblocks and is uncertain regarding its adoption because the answers to the following questions remain unanswered – Whether or not the technology will benefit the entire set of demographics irrespective of age groups? Will the industry stakeholders address the security and privacy concerns relating to the consumer data? Whether or not the technology will be interoperable, and the cost of owning a complete “Smart Home” solution will be made affordable!?! 

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(Disclaimer: Please note no part of this blog may be copied or reused or republished or reproduced in any way, except to share using either the share feature of LinkedIn or posting a direct link to this blog. An excerpt from the blog can be quoted while sharing it in an above-mentioned manner. Any other form of reuse must be done only after obtaining an explicit written consent of the author)

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Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’

Follow Me: Linked In      twitter

Source:  Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)

Healthcare Industry across the world are transforming themselves into coordinated, user-centric, and more efficient systems. This digital transformation implies advance integration, ubiquitous and interoperable healthcare services. Centralized access to health-records and patient-related information to engage patients in their healthcare efficiently. 

With this objective, the ICT will play a critical role in the enhancement of distributed healthcare systems and achieve efficiencies that will fulfil various and frequent update demands. Internet of Things (IoT) has poised to disrupt the Healthcare Industry through intelligently connected-devices, systems, and things that are used by billions of people from all walks of life, to leverage data and help them make more timely, specific, and contextualized decisions. 

The IoT marks the evolution of technology in the Healthcare sector that is enabling a new wave of game-changing and life-enhancing services across the economy. The IoT has significant potentials to bring economic and social benefits to the citizens, end-users, governments, and businesses through advanced and improved service delivery and personalization. The creation of new jobs, and efficient use of scarce resources. IoT enables the healthcare industry to become connected to such an extent that has never been possible before. 

Despite the advancements, IoT in the Healthcare industry has paved the way for many opportunities to leverage from and challenges to be addressed. According to market forecast, The IoT Healthcare Market is worth $158.07 billion with 50 billion connected devices by 2020. The long-predicted IoT evolution in healthcare offers the ability to respond with speed, act at a scale that affects the entire community or city or a nation. Advanced model for prevention and wellness, and able to monitor and support an individual free from “Physical Constraints.” entirely changes the way how doctors deal with patients. 

1. Remote Patient Monitoring and Telehealth: 

Theadvent of Telemedicine allows treating patients using telecommunications reducing costs substantially and minimizing in-facility congestion. Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) also called homecare telehealth with Smart Phone or Smart body sensor allows a patient to perform a routine test and send the real-time test data to the healthcare professional. With the growing problem of chronic diseases be it in rural or urban areas the telemedicine and RPM technology enables remote patient health care access, empowers timely action. 

Remote monitoring technique is a whole new approach to diagnosis and facilitates management & monitoring of patients conditions effectively. The RPM is used with the chronically ill and elderly with high medical care which allows the physicians to closely monitor the patient’s medical conditions and intervene if need be facilitating immediate treatment without losing time. “According to the National Broadband Plan drafted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the use of RPM technology in conjunction with electronic health records (EHR) could save the healthcare industry $700 billion over 15 to 20 years.”

2. Healthcare Information or Electronic Healthcare Records (EHR) Systems: 

The evolution of IoT has propelled the adoption of centralization of healthcare records to be made available from various monitoring systems and medical devices in the EHR systems which are connected to send the data to doctors, labs, nurses, general physicians (GP), and others associated entities with the patient. 

However, the EHR system is being slowly adopted by everyone in the healthcare industry. The hospitals, labs, GPs, and others maintain independent EHR system which is not integrated today. The existing EHR systems are not designed with IoT and real-time data in mind. They have been designed from the patient-centric, affordability, and from the perspective of the healthcare professionals and hospital process, based on static data.

This traditional method of maintaining the patient’s healthcare record is a significant limitation as not all the healthcare data from the connected devices lands in the EHR systems. However, there is a shift towards real-time health system for including real-time data capabilities from the connected/wearable devices and in an IoT perspective. “According to research by Mind Commerce, the Real-Time Health Systems (RTHS) will become a critical area for IoT in healthcare as Data Analytics will be used to evaluate both static and dynamic data for Predictive Analytics for providing a comprehensive or advanced healthcare systems. I strongly believe that the Ministry of Healthcare globally should mandate in centralizing the EHR systems.

3. Robotics and Healthcare Automation: 

Karl Capek first used the word ‘robot’ in his play “R.U.R.” (which stands for Rossum’s Universal Robots) that debuted in 1921. Capek derived the word from the Czech word robota and used to reference mechanical humanoids built to perform menial and repetitive tasks which are the type of jobs the robots surpass the humans. Medical Robots don’t exist only in Sci-fi movies but have already penetrated the world of healthcare. Right from Simplifying Surgery, Hospital Helper, Elderly Care, Paraplegic Possibilities, Aiding Autism, Robotic Medical Assistant Monitoring patient vital statistics, and many such assistants are disrupting the world of healthcare systems. By 2020, the surgical robots will enable the surgeon to perform surgery with precision, control, and enhanced vision. The Surgical System Da Vinci does this precisely with its robotic system featuring a magnified 3D HD vision system. The robotic surgical industry is expected to boom with a sales forecast to double by approx. $6.4 billion by 2022 

Similarly, the Robot TUG is built to carry more than 400kgs in the form of laboratory specimens, medications, and other sensitive materials. The TUG after completing its mission returns to the charging dock for recharging until it is loaded for its next task. The most significant advantage these robots have over a human is, they work round-the-clock reducing the burden of employees working in night-shifts and used for heavy duty physical labour and enabling right channel of the resources. Likewise, there is Robot for Interactive Physical Assistance which is used at homes for patient care for both moving and lifting patient in and out of bed into a wheelchair or helps the patient to sit, stand, and turn them in the bed for preventing bed sores and other medical complications. Hence the Medical Robots are revolutionizing the medical world and playing a critical role in disrupting the way we viewed healthcare a few years back and from what it is today and how it will be tomorrow.

4. Internet of Things Powers the Preventive Healthcare:

 Healthcare’s transition to embracing IoT technologies for Preventive Healthcare will have significant impact transforming the way in which appropriate treatments are provided for unforeseen chronic diseases and medical conditions using the predictive analytics capability of IoT for preventive care. In the modern era of the accelerated ageing population, there is a growing interest and need for the healthcare industry to offer a personalized, collaborative and preventive form of care. 

The Ministry of Healthcare in Singapore aims at ensuring that the elderly and patients with chronic medical conditions are remotely monitored through Smart Connected or Wearable devices which helps in predicting any unusual medical condition or behaviour pattern in the patient’s vital information. The device immediately sends the real-time data of the patient to the cloud-based services which in turn alerts the patient’s nurse or doctor for their proactive action. The Preventive healthcare using IoT is being slowly adopted and is still far from becoming a reality in the near future.

5. Hospital Information Management System (HIMS): 

Thedigital transformation has disrupted the traditional processes and systems of managing the functioning of the hospitals. The IoT has revolutionized the fast-paced world of medicine. It is a daunting task to maintain and operate a multi-speciality Hospital and Nursing homes. The HIMS system will enable the entire functioning paperless. The system integrates all the information about the doctors, staff, patients, administrative details, etc. The significant benefits of IoT for HIMS are Decreased operational costs, Improved or Quality outcomes of the treatment through virtual infrastructures and accessibility of real-time information for making informed decisions, Improved disease management through RPM, Reduced Errors, Enhanced management of drugs, and Enhanced Patient Experience. Thus enabling the Hospitals to become efficient and address the demands of the ever-growing population in this world with various chronic medical conditions.

To Summarize the burgeoning of IoT in the Healthcare Industry has made a paradigm shift and is completely changing the face of the traditional healthcare world. However, the Industry stakeholders need to collaborate to make the vision of IoT in Healthcare into a reality which will transform the face of the medical world for the good of humankind. 

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(Disclaimer: Please note no part of this blog may be copied or reused or republished or reproduced in any way, except to share using either the share feature of LinkedIn or posting a direct link to this blog. An excerpt from the blog can be quoted while sharing it in an above-mentioned manner. Any other form of reuse must be done only after obtaining an explicit written consent of the author)

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Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Digital Transformation, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’

Follow Me: Linked In      twitter

Source:  Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)

Internet of Things (IoT) is poised to disrupt every industry digitally and is considered a “given” phenomena due to its ubiquitous presence in accelerating its influence on the way an individual or a society lives, works, communicates, and connects with one another.

The Connected Logistics 4.0 and Smart Supply Chain Management (SCM) in the Industry 4.0 reckons the market worth of USD 41.30 Billion by 2021, a report from the global markets. That said, the Logistics company is facing an unprecedented transformation as digitization is taking hold with ever-growing expectations & demands from the customer.

Like most of the significant industries, logistics & supply chain management is also confronting an immense transformation; and like all disruptions, this brings both opportunities and risks. New IoT Technology, new market entrants, a new set of growing customer expectation, and new business models have pushed the Industry to develop and adapt to address these challenges which could be revolutionary and evolutionary in some way.

IoT technologies promise far-reaching payoffs for the logistics operations and their end consumers and business customers. The IoT technology is extending its benefits across the entire value chain in the logistics world right from operations, warehousing, freight transportation, to last-mile delivery. IoT technologies also enable productivity, higher efficiency, safety and security and more collaborative operating model. They are also reshaping and redefining the marketplace in ways that are only beginning to become apparent.

The currently SCM is undergoing a significant change, right from the drones for online fulfilments, to mobile robots in the warehouses. With the possibilities in Artificial Intelligence (AI), the SCM 4.0 will be self-orchestrated and become completely autonomous. A fleet of trucks using swarm intelligence or algorithms can increase the throughput in the cargo yards; a trusted peer-to-peer ledger on the blockchain architecture could revolutionize compliance in the Industry. The mobile robots or a host of wearables, as well as machine learning, can rapidly fasten and increase the pace of the order fulfillment. Furthermore, the IoT platforms could connect the retailers to transporters and couriers or delivery services with a single click.

Hence, the SCM 4.0 will be faster, leaner and self-orchestrated. This unprecedented pace of transformation will be driven by a few underlying technologies which will be cautiously adopted by the Industry within the next 10 to 15 years’ timeframe. Following are the critical segments where the IoT technologies will disrupt the logistics and supply chain management functions:

1. Customer Experience: Amazon is developing capabilities to cull out spam and build predictive analytics around their consumer shopping behavior. Amazon wants to ship the products even before the consumers know that they want it. Amazon in its patent on “Anticipatory Shipping” has exemplified a strategy to send deliveries to partial street addresses or zip codes and get the products as close as possible to its consumers and then, in-transit complete the address and route to the one who has placed the order. This advanced delivery process will work well for new product launch such as iPhone X. How many people have searched for iPhone X in the recent times? Interest in a product is shown even before the buying decision is made. Anticipatory shipping is the next wave and will come soon; Predictive models combined with next-gen fleets could potentially lead to “Zero” fulfillment time. Amazon has made a significant investment on building robots and drones to focus on cutting down the delivery time and providing the customer with what they want immediately by getting their drones to deliver small packages directly from their warehouses.

2. Traffic and Fleet Management: Autonomous fleet brings in greater efficiency. “Drones” have become the most favorite toy of all the key players in this Industry. Companies like Amazon has launched its drone for the last-mile deliveries which will be an integral part of the small-time delivery mechanism given that the technology is still at a very nascent stage and for it to advance might take next 10 to 15 years. Before experimenting drones the first vehicles to become Autonomous were forklifts.

The development of forklifts was to avoid the travel by man which is time consuming, unproductive to perform tasks within the warehouse. The forklifts called “vision-guided mobile robots fully autonomous” not only addressed this specific problem but also processed orders (pick and onboard for delivery) four times faster than a man. In fact, Amazon has launched its Robotics at the UK fulfillment centers in Dunstable and Doncaster, where the robots will slide under a tower of shelves where the products are stored, lift it and move it through the fulfillment center enabling to get the items to the customer lot quicker unlike in the traditional processes.

The next significant paradigm shift is in the fleets becoming autonomous as well. Rolls Royce has announced plans to launch its autonomous cargo ships or as the Economist called it – “Ghost Ships” by 2030 while aiding or replacing man was the critical criteria. Autonomous technology in material handling for fleets driving the value of autonomy centers for fuel economy and Truck platooning would cut down on fuel costs by 20 percent.

3. E-Brokerage Platforms – Uber of Trucks: Growth in E-commerce coupled with the connectivity of IoT technologies will usher contemporary solutions for logistics and freight firms. The proliferation of digitization in trucking will force the freight brokers to align their business models which is mobile-based, freight brokerage-solution types. Mobile Apps have become critical ensuring a seamless on-the-move brokerage systems also called “Uberization of Trucking.” In the future, the mobile-based freight brokers will be required to develop in-house software solutions by building synergic collaborations or partnerships with the traditional OEMs, freight brokers, and telematics providers/vendors to facilitate this transformation.

For example, imagine a mobile application is incorporated to match shipper rates, truck drivers, schedules, and routes. This advancement is expected to automate various processes concerning the delivery status, load-finding, driver payment, delivery status, apart from sharing critical real-time information on asset tracking or consignments right from pick-up to delivery. In the current scenario, approx $20 billion is lost in revenue due to empty miles or excess capacity issues.

4. Smarter Commerce with Blockchain: Blockchain technology is demonstrating its potentials in generating new innovative channels on how the logistics applications or solutions need to be developed and deployed which means that the technology can emerge entirely as a new operating system for the supply chain networks which combines the software apps with B2B connectivity.

For instance, as a warehouse head who is responsible for the flow of unhindered supply of goods, there might be occasions when the suppliers may fail to deliver the goods on time and undamaged, that might lead to potential disputes that are time-consuming and recourse measures that legally punitive. The blockchain technology will circumvent such scenarios while allowing the individual to define clear terms and negotiate smart contacts with the suppliers the modes operandi and conditions between the two suppliers or parties. While mandating the sensorization of all goods for generating critical information about the status and delivery time of the products.

The implication of blockchain technology is expected a broader reach to track right from the order initiation by the customer to shipment details, creating a visibility within the entire supply chain system which has not been seen ever before and allowing the parties concerned to access real-time status that is accurate from anywhere and anytime that are only going to be viable in the immediate future.

The future of Logistics Industry which I envision and predict are “On the Spot Manufacturing and Anytime, Anywhere Delivery” which will pose a rigorous competition as the manufacturing of the goods may not be required and will be produced right at the place of the purchase eliminating the intermediaries significantly. Please refer to my article on this advancement here

Similarly, if you want to grow a plant, you don’t need to go the market to purchase it. There are techniques like Hydroponics where you can now grow the plants/trees right where you are. Likewise, with 3D printing or additive manufacturing (AM) using patented designs available on the internet you can create products or things right at your home.

To summarize, the IoT transformations in the logistics industry will open for challenging competitions and compelling for a paradigm shift in the business models which will offer an end to end supply chain of integration to aggregation. So, stay tuned to learn more about how the “Logistics and Smart Supply Chain 4.0” will redefine itself.

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(Disclaimer: Please note no part of this blog may be copied or reused or republished or reproduced in any way, except to share using either the share feature of LinkedIn or posting a direct link to this blog. An excerpt from the blog can be quoted while sharing it in an above-mentioned manner. Any other form of reuse must be done only after obtaining an explicit written consent of the author)

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Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’

Follow Me: Linked In      twitter

Source:  Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)

Apple’s launch of its iconic iPhone X has made a breakthrough in the world of mobile industry and a big leap in its technological advancements. Apple has established itself as the global leader for Smart Phones.

iPhone X’s much-lauded feature called the ‘Face ID’ (Facial Recognition system) using the cutting edge technology called the “Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to unlock the phone without a home button has run into issues with a gap in the technology.

The children under the age of 13 years and siblings with twins will have difficulty in recognizing them apart by the Face ID due to their distinct facial features may not have fully developed, and in case of the twins the Face ID is unable to distinguish the two separate individual faces due to the gap in the current ANNs technology.

Let me explain this further, ANNs is a form of connectionism or computing systems based on the function and structure of the biological neural networks. ANNs is the building block of the Internet of Things (IoT).

ANNs is based on a collection of interconnected nodes similar to a vast network of neurons in a human brain. The information that flows through the network affects the structure of the ANNs due to a neural network changes or learns, in a sense based on the input and output.

It is considered just the way a human brain recognizes an object. There are a brain and a neural network or neurons in our body which senses an object. There are a memory and data which is the input stored in our system which recognizes the object through the Human Neural Networks (HNNs) the moment it sees it.

For example, If you hold a comb horizontally in front of a camera without showing me its side views, the comb will appear to me like a stick. Since the ANNs is not programmed for a 3D mapping of an image or the object. Although men have tried to emulate the Neural Network, unfortunately, the ANNs does not recognize the three-dimensional image mapping, as the algorithms are not defined yet.

However, even if the ANNs recognizes the three-dimensional image mapping, the neural network has its limitations in the present scenario. In case of the identical twins the iPhone X, the Face ID still unlocks the phone which shouldn’t be the case. This is because the phone has captured the biometric features of the face of one twin, whereas the second twin looks at the camera the phone unlocks.

This only means that we are still at a stage where the ANNs doesn’t have the intelligence developed in it to recognize that there is a twin even if there is a 3D approach the differentiation of the object is challenging as of now. However, new technologies should be developed which recognizes the twins as separate objects.

The technology that is available today has already been made use for developing the Autonomous Vehicles (AV). Autonomous vehicles should recognize the signals, cars in front, behind, side, and other movements of objects/people on the road. But, if we place an image of a human being in front of the road how the autonomous vehicle will recognize that the image is not a human being but a picture of a human?

Even though the Artificial Neural networks are working inside the car, it is still not developed entirely due to the gaps and limitations in the technology. However, the facial recognition and any other kind of biometric identification have to be built even for Home Automation or for Industrial IoT.

The Neural network forms the basis of the foundation or the block or the framework on which the entire IoT is built or structured, and the advancement in the ANNs development has to continue in parallel. In another scenario, where the sensors for a running should be able to sense any obstruction or a break-downs in the system but if in case there is a glitch in that particular sensor and fails to detect the obstacle then the whole purpose of developing the cutting-edge & game-changing IoT technology itself fails.

Hence, the ANNs must be developed for recognition of the object with its patterns, characteristics, features, behaviors, gestures, movements, etc. and defining the kind of action that needs to be performed requires the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI forms the second major block for IoT which will create this entire IoT Superstructure. However, currently, there are no solutions to address the gap in the ANNs it only has basic and rudimentary solutions available for now.

The solution which I envision to address this problem is to develop not only ANNs but has to be a combination of Human and ANNs. The will require a cell to be developed in the lab which will then combine with the AI outside. The original cell of a human being and the Artificial Intelligence from outside combined will give a reliable and robust technology for future Computing and advancements for IoT verticals.

To summarize, there is a Neuron or a Neural network which is real and not an artificial one which will send information that will be tracked by the ANNs which converts it into its algorithms and provides a proper output or a command. The Industry Stakeholders should focus on continuing to advance their R&D in this space. The Future of IoT Framework will be on “Human Neural Networks (HNNs) collaborating with Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs).” 

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(Disclaimer: Please note no part of this blog may be copied or reused or republished or reproduced in any way, except to share using either the share feature of LinkedIn or posting a direct link to this blog. An excerpt from the blog can be quoted while sharing it in an above-mentioned manner. Any other form of reuse must be done only after obtaining an explicit written consent of the author)

———————————————————————————————–

Rajashree Rao (Raj) is an Industry Thought Leader & Visionary for IoT/IIoT/Smart Cities, Digital Evangelist, Speaker, Writer, Mentor, and Entrepreneur. While Raj writes on a wide variety of subjects, her favorite topics are IoT Technologies, Leadership, Women’s Empowerment, and ‘Self.’

Follow Me: Linked In twitter

Source: Rajashree K Rao(#IoTRaj)