INDUSTRIAL
INTERNET
REVOLUTION
T
he concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) is not new to
the industrial world. Since the creation of the barcode
in 1952, the idea of using the digital world to manage
physical things has grown in feasibility and potential
impact, thanks to the accelerated development of the Internet.
In the late 1960s, the challenge of linking heterogeneous
computers and networks was resolved by ARPANET,
the predecessor of the Internet, with the use
of ‘packet switching’ to transfer diverse
data sets from one computer to
another using existing
communications
infrastructure. The destination rapidly turned into
interconnecting people through increasingly smaller
and faster computing devices via a growing network of
information highways, which by 2014 is estimated to link over
2.7 billion people.
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In the meantime, many things that were not considered part
of the interconnectivity revolution were being transformed by
another significant development: the ‘smartisation’ of devices.
As smaller computing processors became available, discrete
hardware devices were integrated with embedded software
(know as firmware) forming a ‘smart device.’ In principle, the
combined hardware and software was pre-configured to
perform a particular process (such as basic diagnostic and
controls) generally not allowing the users to change the
software or control the hardware. Later, dedicated sensors were
added to certain devices to enable physical diagnostics of
its condition or its output, enabling new types of
monitoring, diagnostics and controls. With
the parallel evolution of wired and
wireless communication
networks and the
THE
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