IOT Applications:
IoT applications span a wide range of domains including (but not limited to) home,
cities, environment, energy systems, retail, logistics, industry, agriculture, health.
1. Home Automation
2. Cities
3. Environment
4. Energy Systems
5. Retail
6. Logistics
7. Industry
8. Agriculture
9. Health & Lifestyle
1. Home Automation:
a) Smart Lightning:
Smart lightning for homes helps in saving energy by adapting
the lightning to the ambient conditions and switching ON/OFF
or dimming the lights when needed.
- It is achieved by sensing the human movements and their
environment and controlling lights accordingly.
Key enabling technologies for smart lightning include :
- Solid state lightning (LED Lights): For this, both spectral
and temporal characteristics can be configured.
- IP- enabled lights
Wireless- enabled and internet connected lights can be
controlled remotely from IoT applications such as mobile or
web applications.
b) Smart Appliances:
Modern homes have a number of appliances such as TV’s,
refrigerators, music systems, washer/dryers, etc.
Managing and controlling these appliances can be
cumbersome; each appliance having its own controls or remote
controls.
Smart appliances make the management easy and also provide
status information to the user remotely.
Ex:
- Smart Washer/dryers: These are controlled remotely and
notify when washing or drying cycle is completed.
- Smart Thermostats: Allow controlling the temperature
remotely and can learn the user preferences.
- Smart Refrigerators: Keep track of items stored and send
updates to the user when an item is low on stock.
- Smart TV’s: Allow users to search and stream videos and
movies from the internet on the local storage drive.
Open Remote: It is an open source automation platform for
homes and buildings and works with standard hardware.
Open Remote comprises of 3 components:
- Controller: It manages scheduling and run time
integration between devices.
- Designer: It allows you to create both configurations
for the controller and create user interface designs.
- Control Panels: It allows you to interact with devices
and control them.
c) Intrusion Detection:
Home intrusion detection system use security cameras and
sensors to detect intrusion and raise alerts.
Alerts can be in the form of an
- Sms
- Email
- Image grab
- Short video clip
The cloud controlled intrusion detection system uses location-
aware services where geo- location of each node of a home
automation system is independently detected and stored in the
cloud.
- In the event of intrusions the cloud services alerts the
accurate neighbors or local police.
- In the intrusion detection system based on
UPnP(Universal-Plug-and-Play) technology is the
system uses image processing to recognize the intrusion
and extract the intrusion subject and generate Universal-
Plug-and-Play (UPnP based) instant messaging for
alerts.
d) Smoke/Gas Detectors:
Smoke detectors are installed in homes and buildings to detect
the smoke that is typically an early sign of fire.
Smoke detectors use optical detection, ionization or air
sampling techniques to detect smoke.
Gas Detectors: They can detect the presence of harmful gases
such as carbon monoxide, liquid petroleum gas, etc.
Alert raised by smart smoke/gas detectors can be in the form of
signals to the user or a fire alarm system and provide visual
feedback (healthy, battery-low, etc.) on its status.
2. Cities:
a) Smart Parking:
Finding a parking space during the rush hours in crowded cities
can be time consuming and frustrating.
Smart parking makes the search for parking space easier and
convenient for drivers using sensors.
Smart parking are powered by IoT systems that detect the
number of empty parking slots and send the information over
the internet to smart parking applications back-ends.
These applications can be accessed by the drivers from smart
phones, tablets and in – car navigation systems.
Latest trends in parking like Polycarpou et.al. Describes
parking availability monitoring, parking reservation and
dynamic pricing schemes.
b) Smart Lightning:
Smart lightning systems for roads, parks and building can help
in saving energy.
Smart lightning allows lightning to be dynamically controlled
and also adaptive to the ambient conditions.
c) Smart Roads:
Smart roads equipped with sensors can provide information on
driving conditions, travel time estimates and alerts in case of
poor driving conditions, traffic congestions and accidents.
Information sensed from the roads can be communicated via
the internet to cloud- based applications and social media and
disseminated to the drivers who subscribe to such applications.
d) Structural Health Monitoring:
This system uses a network of sensors to monitor the vibration
levels in the structures such as bridges and buildings.
The data collected from the sensors is analyzed, so it is possible
to detect cracks and mechanical break downs, locate the
damages to a structure and also calculate the remaining life of
the structure.
e) Surveillance:
Surveillance of infra-structure, public transport and events in
cities is required to ensure safety and security.
City wide surveillance infra-structure comprising of large
number of distributed and internet connected video surveillance
cameras can be created.
The video feeds from surveillance cameras can be aggregated
in cloud- based scalable storage solutions.
f) Emergency Response:
IoT systems can be used for monitoring the critical infra-
structure in cities such as buildings, gas and water pipe lines,
public transport and power sub stations.
It can help in generating alarms and minimizing their effects on
the critical infra-structure.
Iot systems for critical infra-structure monitoring enable
aggregation and sharing of information collected from large
number of sensors.
Response to alert generated by systems such as sensor data,
audio, video feeds can be in the form of alerts send to the
public re-routing of traffic, evacuations of the affected areas.
3. Environment:
a) Weather Monitoring:
IoT based weather monitoring systems can collect data from a
number of sensors attached(such as temperature, humidity,
pressure etc.)and send the data to cloud based applications and
storage back ends.
Weather alerts can be send to the subscribed users from such
applications.
AirPi is a weather and air quality monitoring kit capable of
recording and uploading information about temperature,
humidity, air pressure, light levels, UV levels, carbon
monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and smoke level to the internet.
b) Air Pollution Monitoring:
IoT based air pollution monitoring systems can monitor
emission of harmful gases(CO2, CO, NO, NO2, etc.) by
factories and automobiles using gaseous metrological sensors.
A real time air quality monitoring system is presented that
comprises of several distributed monitoring stations that
communicate via wireless with a backend server using machine
to machine communication.
c) Noise Pollution monitoring:
Due to growing urban development, noise level in cities have
increased and even become alarming high in some cities.
Noise pollution can cause human hazards for humans due to
sleep disruption and stress.
Noise pollution monitoring can help in generating noise maps
for cities.
The data on noise levels from the noise monitoring stations is
collected on severs or in the cloud.
A smart phone application allows the users to continuously
measure noise levels and send to a central server where all
generated information is aggregated and mapped to a
meaningful noise visualization map.
d) Forest Fire Detection:
Forest fire can cause damage to natural resources, property and
human life.
They can be different causes of forest fire including lightning,
human negligence, volcanic eruptions and sparks from rock
falls.
Early detection of forest fires can help in minimizing the
damage.
IoT based forest fire detection systems use a number of
monitoring nodes deployed at different locations in a forest.
Each monitoring node collect measurements on ambient
conditions including temperature, humidity, light levels, etc.
The system for early detection of forest fires provides early
warning of a potential forest fires and estimate the scale and
intensity of the fire if it materializes.
The Forest fire detection system uses multi criteria detection
which is implemented by the artificial neural networks (ANN).
e) River Floods Detection:
River floods can cause extensive damage to the natural and
human resources and human life.
Early warnings of floods can be given by monitoring the water
level and flow rate.
IoT based river flood monitoring system use a number of
sensor nodes that monitor the water level and flow rate using
flow velocity sensor.
monitoring applications raise alert when rapid increase in water
level and flow rate is detected.
A river flood monitoring system includes a water level
monitoring module, network video recorder module, and data
processing module.
The flood information is in the form of raw data, predicted
data, and video feed.
4. Energy Systems:
a) Smart Grids:
Smart grid is a data communications network integrated with
the electrical grid that collects and analyzes data captured in
real-time about power transmission, distribution and
consumption.
Smart grid technology provides predictive information and
recommendations in utilities, their suppliers, and their
customers on how best to manage power.
Smart grids use high –speed, fully integrated, two-way
communication technologies for real -time information and
power exchange.
Storage collection and analysis of smarts grid data in the cloud
can help in dynamic optimization of system operations,
maintenance and planning.
Cloud-based monitoring of smart grids data can improve
energy using levels via energy feedback to users coupled with
real-time pricing information.
Condition monitoring data collected from power generation and
transmission systems can help in detecting faults and predicting
outages.
b) Renewable Energy System:
Due to the variability in the output from renewable energy
sources such as solar and wind integrating them into the grid
can cause grid stability and reliability problems.
When distributed renewable energy sources are integrated into
the grid, they create power bi-directional power flows for
which the grids were not originally designed.
IOT based systems integrated with the transformers at the point
of interconnection measure the electrical variables and how
much power is fed into the grid.
c) Prognostics:
Energy systems have a large number of critical
components that must function correctly so that the
systems can perform their operations correctly. Ex: a
wind turbine has a number of critical components.
In systems such as power grids, real time information is
collected using specialized electrical sensors called
Phasor Measurement Units (PMU) at the substations.
The information received from PMUs must be
monitored in real-time for estimating the state of the
system and for predicting failures.
OpenPDC is a set of applications for processing of
streaming time-series data collected from Phasor
Measurement Units (PMUs) in real-time.
A generic framework for storage, processing and
analysis of massive machine maintenance data
collecting from a large number of sensors embedded in
industrial machines, in a cloud computing environment
was proposed.
5. Retail:
a)Inventory Management:
Inventory Management for retail has become
increasingly important in recent years with the
growing competition.
IOT systems using Radio Frequency Identification
(RIFD) tags can help in inventory management and
maintaining the right inventory levels.
RIFD tags attached to the products allow them to be
tracked in real-time so that the inventory levels can be
determined accurately and products which are low on
stock can be replenished.
b) Smart payments:
Smart payment solutions such as contact-less
payment powered by technology
Near field communication (NFC) is a set of
standards for smart-phones and other devices to
communicate with each other by bringing them
into proximity or by touching them.
NFC may be used in combination with Bluetooth
where NFC initiates initial pairing of devices to
establish a Bluetooth connection while the actual
data transfer take place over Bluetooth.
c) Smart Vending Machines:
Smart Vending machine connected to the internet
allow remote monitoring of
- Inventory levels
- elastic pricing of products
- promotions
- contact-less payment using NFC
Smart phone application that communicates with
smart vending machine using NFC.
Smart vending machine can reduce the price as the
expiry date nears.
New product can be recommended to the customer
on the purchase history and preferences.
6. Logistics:
a) Route Generation and scheduling:
Modern transportation system are driven by data collected from
multiple sources which is processed to provide new services to
the stake holders.
By collecting large amount of data from various sources and
processing the data into useful information, data driven
transportation system can provide new services such as
advanced route guidance, dynamic vehicle routing, anticipating
customer demands for pickup and delivery problem.
IoT based systems backed by the cloud can provide fast
response to route generation queries and can be scaled up to
serve a large transportation network.
b) Fleet tracking:
vehicle fleet tracking systems use GPS technology to track the
locations of the vehicles in real time.
cloud based fleet tracking systems can be scaled up on demand
to handle large number of vehicles.
Alerts can be generated in case of deviations in planned routes.
The fleet tracking system can analyze messages send from the
vehicles to identify unexpected incidences and discrepancies
between actual and planned data so that remedial actions can be
taken.
c) Shipment Monitoring:
Shipment monitoring solutions for transportation systems allow
monitoring the conditions inside containers.
Ex: Containers carrying fresh food produce can be monitored to
prevent spoilage of food.
IoT based shipment monitoring systems use sensors such as
temperature, pressure, humidity for instance to monitor the
conditions inside the containers and send the data to the cloud,
where it can be analyzed to detect food spoilage.
for fragile products vibration levels during shipments can be
tracked using accelerometer and gyroscope sensors attached to
IoT devices.
d) Remote Vehicle Diagnostics:
Remote vehicle diagnostic systems can detect faults in the
vehicles or warn of impending faults.
These diagnostic systems use on-board IoT devices for
collecting data on vehicle operation( such as speed, engine
RPM, coolant temperature, fault code number ) and status on
various sub systems.
such data can be captured by integrating on-board diagnostic
systems with IoT devices using protocols
such as CAN bus.
OBD systems provide real time data on the status of vehicle
sub systems on diagnostic trouble codes which allows rapidly
identifying the faults in the vehicle.
7. Industry:
a) Machine Diagnosis and Prognosis:
Machine prognosis refers to predicting the
performance of a machine by analyzing the data on the
current operating conditions and how much deviations
exit from the normal operating conditions.
Machine Diagnosis refers to determining the cause of a
machine fault.
IoT plays a major role in both prognosis and diagnosis
of industrial machines.
Sensors in machine can monitor the operating
conditions such as( temperature and vibration levels).
A number of methods have been proposed for reliability
analysis and fault prediction in machines.
Case-based reasoning (CBR) is commonly used method
that find solutions to new problems based on past
experiences.
This past experience is organized and represented as
cases in a case-base.
CBR is an effective technique for problem solving in
the fields in which it is hard to establish a quantitative
mathematical model, such as machine diagnosis and
prognosis.
b) Indoor Air Quality Monitoring:
Monitoring indoor air quality in factories is important
for health and safety of the workers.
Harmful and toxic gases such as carbon monoxide(CO),
nitrogen monoxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), etc.
can cause serious health problems.
IoT based gas monitoring system can help in monitoring
the indoor air quality using various gas sensors.
Hybrid sensor system for indoor air quality monitoring
is presented, which contains both stationary sensors( for
accurate reading and calibration) and mobile sensor( for
coverage).
8. Agriculture:
a) Smart irrigation:
Smart irrigation system can improve crop yields while
saving water
It use IoT devices with soil moisture sensors to
determine the amount of moisture in the soil and release
the flow of water through the irrigation pipes only in
when the moisture levels go below a predefined
threshold.
Cultivar's RainCloud is a device for smart irrigation that
uses water values, soil sensors and WiFi enabled
programming computer.
b) Green House Control:
Green Houses are structures with glass or plastic roofs
that provide conductive environment for growth of
plans.
The climatologically conditions inside a green house
can be monitored and controlled to provide the best
conditions for growth of plants.
The temperature, humidity, soil moisture, light and
carbon dioxide levels are monitored using sensors and
the climatological conditions are controlled
automatically using actuation devices( such as valves
for releasing water and switches for controlling fans).
9. Health & Lifestyle:
a) Health and Fitness Monitoring:
Wearable IoT devices that allows non-invasive and
continuous monitoring of physiological parameters can
help in continuous health and fitness monitoring.
These wearable devices may can be in various forms
such as belts and wrist-bands.
The wearable devices form a type of wireless sensor
networks called body area networks in which the
measurements from a number of wearable devices are
continuous send to a master node( such as a Smart-
Phone) which then sends the data to a server or a cloud-
based back-end for analysis and archiving.
Commonly uses body sensors include: Body
temperature, heart rate, pulse oximeter oxygen
saturation(SPO2), blood pressure,
electrocardiogram(ECG), movement( with
accelerometers), electroencephalogram(EEG).
b) Wearable Electronics:
Wearable electronics such as wearable gadgets (Smart
watches, smart glasses, Wrist bands, etc.) and fashion
electronics( with electronics integrated in clothing and
accessories,( ex: Google glass or Moto 360 smart
watch) provide various functions and features to assist
us in our daily activities and making us lead healthy
life styles.
With smart watches the users can search the internet,
play audio or video files, make calls, etc.
Smart glasses allow users to take photos and record
the videos, get map directions, check flight status,
search internet, etc.
Smart wrist bands can track the daily exercises and
calories burnt.
