iminds insights - internet of things

A WORLD OF THINKING OBJECTS

The Internet of Things will radically transform the ways we interact with our world and control our surroundings.

THE APPLICATIONS GO BEYOND SHIPPING - FROM GARBAGE COLLECTION TO PARKING SPACES; THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS.

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Jan Van Herbruggen

BASED ON INTERVIEWS WITH ACADEMIC AND INDUSTRY EXPERTS - WWW.IMINDS.BE/INSIGHTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY


By connecting and embedding intelligence in everyday objects—from single factory machines to the complex infrastructures of entire smart cities—the Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to give us unprecedented control over our surroundings, and enable intelligent interaction with those surroundings in ways we cannot fully imagine today. It will bring as massive a change to society as the first Internet has done—if we can successfully solve some crucial technological challenges and answer fundamental questions about how we want to live in an immersively connected world. Because after all, the Internet of Things is still an Internet for People.

A THREEFOLD RESEARCH CHALLENGE

MAKING THE IOT PLUG-AND-PLAY

Objects in the Internet of Things cannot require complex

configuration. They have to deploy in a plug-and-play fashion or the whole system will become too unwieldy. Wireless connectivity is key to this: networks that can be rolled out nearly anywhere and (re)configured easily, supporting an ever-evolving and ever-growing ecosystem of devices. That’s the model iMinds has worked with weaving machine manufacturer Picanol to achieve as it builds intelligence into its next-generation equipment. Yet wireless connectivity is less stable than wireline connectivity. For the IoT to be truly plug-and-play, researchers need to solve a further, related challenge.

MAKING THE IoT RELIABLE AND SECURE

For mission-critical applications in particular, network lag times must be negligible. This can be a challenge in industrial environments that often obstruct wireless signals—a challenge iMinds worked with Volvo to help solve in its IoT-

THE INTERNET OF THINGS IS STILL AN

INTERNET FOR PEOPLE.

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02 | iMinds insights

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

enabled truck plants. Capacity and speed will ensure the reliability of the Internet of Things—and yet at the same time stand to put pressure on network infrastructures, especially with potentially billions of devices talking to each other over the public Internet. And so another question arises: how do we keep the IoT from overburdening the world’s networks?

DISTRIBUTING INTELLIGENCE THROUGHOUT THE IoT

The answer is to make smart, flexible decisions about where data is processed within the Internet of Things. The proposed model is a distributed and intelligent ‘fog’: a hybrid scenario in which certain ‘thinking’ happens at the device level while other functions, such as the generation of encrypted keys for secure transactions, will occur in the cloud. That’s a vision Flanders’ own Track4C is exploring, with help from iMinds researchers, as it develops networked sensor technologies for cargo tracking.

INFUSING THINGS WITH WISDOM

The Internet of Things represents only a beginning. Combining the intelligence of connected things with other sources of information will allow our ‘things’ to respond to the dynamics of a given environment, leading to a new reality characterized by the ‘Wisdom of Things’, where devices use contextual awareness to make intelligent, autonomous decisions. In a new strategic research program, 20 of iMinds’ most forward-looking IoT researchers will take on this and many of the field’s other fundamental research challenges.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

about iMinds’ expertise in the field of Internet of Things, please contact Thomas [email protected]

iMinds insights | 03

REALIZING THE VISION FOR AN INTERNET OF THINGSFor a sense of just how far the impact of the Internet of Things will reach, we should look past the obvious example of tomorrow’s hyper-networked metropolises and instead consider a farmer’s field in the heart of the countryside.

For about 12,000 years, farmers have lived more or less at the mercy of the elements. Not knowing which specific seed will take root in a given soil, agriculturalists today still spread blends of seeds over vast tracts of land with fingers crossed the weather will provide optimal growing conditions.

The Internet of Things (IoT) stands to wipe away all that inefficiency

and imprecision. Putting the IoT to work, a farmer might deploy miniaturized, networked devices to gather real-time data on soil quality and moisture levels, and to track, analyze and exchange information on weather patterns and effects. With such tools, he or she could know exactly which seed type to plant on which acre of land, how much fertilizer to apply, and how to contend with all types of weather—saving time and money while boosting crop yields.

The impact of the Internet of Things will be felt everywhere: in rural villages and urban centers; in every economic sector from transportation and logistics to medicine, manufacturing and food production.


THE INTERNET OF THINGS WILL

BRING AS MASSIVE A CHANGE TO

SOCIETY AS THE FIRST INTERNET

HAS DONE. “

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50 BILLION ‘SMART OBJECTS’

Rapid adoption rate of digital infrastructure: 5x faster than electricity and telephony

TIMELINE

2010 2015 2020

10

6.8 7.2 7.6

20

30

40

50

BILL

IONS

OF D

EVICE

S

WORLD POPULATION

INFLECTION POINT

12.5

25

Source: iMinds analysis, Cisco IBSG, April 2011

The IoT will optimize business systems, enable fine-grained asset tracking, and facilitate cost-saving predictive maintenance in machine parks. It will make household environments highly adaptable, for example by boosting the volume of the stereo automatically when the dishwasher is running, or quieting the TV when someone picks up the phone.

By connecting—and embedding intelligence in—everyday objects from single factory machines to the complex infrastructures of entire smart cities, the Internet of Things has the potential to give us unprecedented control over our surroundings, and to allow us to interact intelligently with those surroundings in ways we cannot

even fully imagine today. In doing so, it will bring as massive a change to society as the first Internet has done—if we can successfully solve some crucial technological challenges and answer fundamental questions about how we want to live in an immersively connected world.

Over the past 10 years, iMinds researchers have actively explored areas key to realizing the vision for the Internet of Things, advancing real-world IoT applications in a variety of sectors. What’s more, they are already investigating the next step—in pursuit of a true ‘Wisdom of Things’, the Holy Grail of engineering.


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WHAT ‘THINGS’ WILL BE IN YOUR IOT?

Virtually any ‘thing’ could be part of the Internet of Things. That’s what will make it immersive: intelligent appliances that ‘talk’ to one another, from a wearable health monitor that doubles as a watch to power sockets and light fixtures that monitor energy consumption-all the objects we come into contact with on a daily basis will fold into our personal and professional mesh of connectivity.


INTERNET OF THINGS: PRACTICAL USE CASESEarly IoT applications are being investigated and deployed in a wide range of sectors. In transportation and logistics, for example, vehicle and driver movements are closely tracked to facilitate just-in-time delivery, optimize fuel consumption and enable business-critical benchmarking. As well, the condition of goods being transported—including refrigeration levels for food items—can be monitored and controlled along every stage of a product’s journey.

In other sectors, organizations are looking at ways of using built-in device connectivity to automate, streamline and bring intelligence to systems and processes. Picanol,

an international manufacturer of weaving machines based in Belgium, is currently working with iMinds on an IoT solution to automate and optimize the operation of as many as 500 weaving machines at once. Another iMinds research project, GreenWeCan, explored the development of a sensor network that included parking sensor devices so that citizens (in particular, disabled drivers) could be directed to empty parking spots by a mobile app. Such technology could be expanded to encompass traffic monitoring or city-wide parking management, making it an important step toward improving quality of life in a smart city.

Health and care is another sector exploring the possibilities of the

Internet of Things. Physicians have begun to look at ways intelligent objects can support the increasing digitization of their practice, integrating remote monitoring of patients with accurate, always up-to-date electronic health records. Smart pill boxes that record and report back on medications taken will help eliminate errors and give physicians greater confidence in managing patients after they have been discharged—not only improving the efficiency of care systems but also patient recovery.

MAKING THE INTERNET OF THINGS A REALITYTo realize the vision of a true Internet of Things and lay the foundation for the Wisdom of Things, several challenges demand

THE IOT LANDSCAPEIn the near future, the Internet of Things will be a part of daily life and business operations.

Soil info determines the best moment to harvest your crops.

Lights and termperature power down automatically as you leave home.

Find an open parking spot.

Track and trace will become track and tell.. Tell me in what condition my goods are, now!

Robotics and sensor technology are essential for the factory of the future.

A WORLD OFTHINKING OBJECTS


the attention of researchers and policy-makers. Many of these are technical in nature while others—such as those pertaining to security, individual privacy and the problem of technologies that are inaccessible to and uncontrollable by non-specialist users—demand social science research and policy solutions.

On the technical front, iMinds researchers have identified three primary challenges to be addressed for the IoT to be made real:

1. The Internet of Things must be plug-and-play—easy to use and (re)configure

2. The Internet of Things must be reliable and secure—delivering performance that meets the needs and expectations of individuals, businesses and governments

3. The Internet of Things cannot add further burden to the world’s already strained networks—meaning intelligence must be distributed in a flexible and efficient way

All three are interrelated. To be plug-and-play, for instance, the IoT requires wireless connectivity. Wired networks may provide stable, very high bandwidth connections, but they are cumbersome to deploy and inflexible to change. Wireless networks, on the other hand, can be rolled out nearly anywhere and (re)configured easily, supporting

HOW CAN WE AVOID NETWORKS FROM BECOMING OVERBURDENED IN AN INTERNET

OF THINGS? “

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INFUSING ‘THINGS’ WITH WISDOM

Metcalfe’s Law, as it is sometimes called, says the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users. This holds equally true for connected ‘things’. Yet connectivity by means of an IP address is only the beginning. Combining the intelligence of connected things with other sources of information stands to make services and applications situationally or contextually aware. Using that awareness so ‘things’ can make intelligent decisions and respond to the dynamics of the environment is what’s meant by the ‘Wisdom of Things’.The potential applications are many. Imagine a next-generation navigation system in which information about the arrival of a big container ship is transmitted to public navigation systems, helping predict traffic jams in-land related to unloading and transporting containers from the ship. With such systems at work, moving from one point to the other will look completely different in a few years from now and the productivity losses linked to traffic jams will be significantly reduced.


an ever-evolving and ever-growing ecosystem of devices. Yet wireless networks are less stable than their cabled counterparts: in solving the plug-and-play challenge we are suddenly confronted with the second challenge of reliability.

The reliability problem is compounded by the fact that, for mission-critical applications in particular, network lag times must be negligible. The need for capacity and speed will put pressure on network infrastructures, especially with potentially billions of devices talking to each other over the public Internet. And so a further question arises: how can we avoid networks from becoming overburdened in an Internet of Things? We will need what has been called a distributed and intelligent ‘fog’.

iMinds’ interdisciplinary research teams are working with industry partners and other strategic research institutes to address each of these challenge areas, building on real-world use cases.

TOWARD A PLUG-AND-PLAY INTERNET OF THINGSPlug-and-play capabilities have been vital to the mass adoption of technologies such as personal computers and mobile phones. Users—whether individual or corporate—have little interest in becoming configuration

OBJECTS NEED TO BE ABLE TO SPEAK TO OTHER OBJECTS

OUTSIDE THEIR OWN VENDOR

GROUP. ““


EASE OF USE IS ESSENTIAL TO UPTAKE

Users cannot be expected to become technology experts to set up and take advantage of IoT applications.

F e w m a n u f a c t u r i n g companies, for example, are expert in information and communications technology (ICT), and many are cautious about embedding ICT into their operations. While they recognize the potential efficiencies the Internet of Things can bring to mass production, they are not interested in carrying out complex configurations or having to deploy (and manage and maintain) intricate networks in their production facilities to realize those benefits.

They require machines that can be deployed without days of configuration and integration, and are able to discover services and join the existing network of objects automatically. In fact, as more devices join these networks, the less practical – or even possible- it will be to configure and manage them manually. Complexity will make automatic configuration non-negotiable.


specialists: they simply want to put technologies to work. Ten years ago, a cellphone user may have had to specify which network the device was to connect to; today, he or she pushes the ‘on’ button and the phone configures itself.Looking at plug-and-play problems is relatively simple from the perspective of a single user working with a single application, which has largely been the focus of IoT research in the past decade.

In a true Internet of Things, however, circumstances are bound to be much more complex. Take the example of a smart city, where machines supporting the daily activities of dozens of distinct municipal departments interact

with each other and with countless devices distributed among citizens, service providers and local businesses. There is no single owner of the infrastructure or the various applications.

iMinds has been investigating these kinds of multifaceted IoT environments for several years—for example, as related to the shipping of goods, where multiple parties may have an interest in a container, its contents or the vessel transporting it. In such complex IoT environments it will be essential for users to identify high-level business goals, performance expectations and the like—what they each ultimately need the system to do. Something then has

to translate those expectations into executable instructions for the underlying platform that manages and monitors software components distributed throughout the entire system: in other words, a multivendor, multiprotocol layer of middleware.

In creating this middleware, the challenge for the architects of the Internet of Things will be to find the right balance of automation and control—shielding users from excessive complexity while at the same time allowing parameters to be controlled in what has been called a ‘consumable level of abstraction’. Today, one requires a PhD to program IoT deployments; that clearly is not scalable.

In an open standards envi-ronment, domain indepen-dent IoT enablers (such as CoAP) will be usable for a wide variety of applications and application providers.

TOWARDS OPEN STANDARDS

Source: iMinds analysis, Cisco

PROPRIETARY VERTICALSOLUTIONS: PROPRIETARY

PROTOCOLS & TECHNOLOGIESIP CONNECTIVITY

DOMAIN INDEPENDENT APPLICATION ENABLEMENT

RECONFIGURABLE TECHNOLOGIES

APPLICATIONS

SENSORS AND SMART DEVICES

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THE NEED FOR STANDARDIZATIONStandardization will be essential to enabling the kind of automation envisioned for a plug-and-play Internet of Things. With today’s emerging IoT applications, many protocols still tend to be solution-specific and vertically segregated: if you buy a sensor from one vendor, it will talk only to other sensors made by that vendor. Establishing ‘horizontal’ standards will allow the same protocols or mechanisms to be applied across the full range of solutions—enabling the interoperability that will be essential to a genuine, scalable Internet of Things. Objects need to be able to speak to other objects outside their own vendor group or solution family. Industry bodies are working toward open standards to overcome this hurdle. For example, Bluetooth Smart has emerged as a small-scale standard for wearables and other applications. The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) defined by the IETF CoRE Working Group is expected to become the standard for integrating constrained devices into IP-based Internet and web services.

iMinds has closely followed the development of IoT standards from the very beginning. It is actively involved in IETF CoRE efforts


iMINDS HAS CLOSELY

FOLLOWED THE DEVELOPMENT OF IOT STANDARDS FROM THE VERY

BEGINNING. “

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AN ADDRESS FOR EVERY DEVICE

The Internet Protocol (IP) has been extremely effective as the glue binding together the world’s network communications.

The dominant version of IP today is IPv4, which was introduced in the early 1980s and could support as many as 4 billion individual device addresses. While that may have seemed like an abundance 30 years ago the supply of IPv4 addresses has since been exhausted – and even if it hadn’t been, could not accommodate the 50 billion devices expected by 2020. IPv6, the latest version of the IP standard, will support 340 billion addresses enough for the far-foreseeable future. Sticking with IP as the standard is key to our connected future, as the task of migrating billions of users and devices to a new ‘clean-slate’ protocol is almost unimaginably complex.


to develop reference-solution implementations, and also takes part in CoAP interoperability testing. iMinds teams have built on CoAP to develop new enablers that facilitate the design of IoT applications or reduce ‘communication overhead’ in sensor networks. Specifically, iMinds’ work provides the basis for fine-grained control over CoAP resources, with extensions for monitoring sensors in a given network and for enabling interactions between sensors and actuators (the devices that activate sensors) without human intervention. Some of these extensions have been taken up by IETF CoRE. iMinds is also

working on the middleware that will sit between IoT applications and the underlying communication platform.

MAKING THE IOT RELIABLE AND SECUREThe next research challenge is how to ensure the reliability of the Internet of Things. As mentioned, the flexibility of wireless networking is essential for the easy deployment of IoT solutions. Yet today’s wireless networks still do not deliver the reliability of wired networks. While organizations such as hospitals, factories and logistics companies stand to benefit greatly from IoT capabilities, they cannot

afford to risk suboptimal network performance, data loss or downtime.While today’s 802.11 (Wi-Fi) standards family includes mechanisms for dealing with transmission errors, those mechan isms invo lve re- transmissions that can introduce unacceptab le de lays fo r environments demanding real-time wireless and ultra-fast reaction times (for example, to activate safety shutdowns when equipment overheats, in which case ‘acceptable delay’ may not be more than a few hundred milliseconds).

Further potential slowdowns may be

Depending on applica-tion, user and policy requirements, it is de-cided where to place the intelligence to op-erate functions such as processing, security and QoS and how to optimally configure the communication infra-structure.

DISTRIBUTEDINTELLIGENCE

EMBEDDED PROCESSING LOCAL CONNECTIVITY INTERMEDIATE PROCESSING GLOBAL CONNECTIVITY CLOUD PROCESSING

IOT APPLICATION(S) USER NEEDS/POLICIES

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caused by the fact that Wi-Fi is not designed for dense deployments: its mechanisms for avoiding collisions between signals narrow the available spectrum, introducing inefficiencies that create latency and lag. Industrial settings in particular pose additional challenges for wireless transmission, in that a factory full of metal machinery and steel beams constitutes a virtual obstacle course for wireless signals.

Finally, wireless networks are highly dynamic, often requiring reconfiguration on the fly to respond to changing conditions.

iMinds researchers have actively addressed these problems through a number of research projects with industrial partners such as Picanol and Volvo: in the first case, developing solutions for deploying stable and self-healing wireless communication in large-scale factory environments; and in the second, to create a secure, reliable infrastructure that can be installed and maintained despite constant reconfiguration of factory layouts, with multi-device support and no interference or dropped connections.

To address challenges such as these, iMinds has created a mobile test bed for IoT applications that can be deployed in complex environments, and that enables public and private sector research partners to gain greater understanding of reliability and scalability issues in their specific wireless network settings. One particular example includes a collaboration with Airbus Group, which was developing a wireless cabin management system for its

aircrafts. In order to come up with a good solution, the Airbus engineers needed to understand how the wireless signals propagate inside the plane - a complex and time-consuming measurement, since aircrafts are not very accessible. Bringing a portable version of their mobile test bed, iMinds researchers were invited to set up their equipment in a mock-up of an Airbus cabin, and were able to conduct a lot of highly specialized measurements in a short timeframe - providing the Airbus engineers with valuable input.

CONSIDERING PRIVACY AND SECURITYBeyond the integrity of the signal, the information transmitted by the wireless network must also be kept secure—for the sake of operational safety as well as, in many cases, personal privacy. This applies both to institutional environments, such as hospitals, and for people in their everyday lives at home. If one’s household objects can communicate with one another, the information they exchange could be shared invisibly with other devices, organizations or people. This takes the ‘reliability’ challenge of the Internet of Things beyond the realm of the merely technical. Users need to be able to control what happens with data collected by their homes, appliances, vehicles and bodies—and to propagate their personal wishes for privacy throughout the network.

Imagine, for example, a vending machine in one’s workplace equipped with RFID technology


iMINDS HAS CREATED A MOBILE TEST BED

FOR IOT APPLICATIONS THAT CAN BE

DEPLOYED IN COMPLEX ENVIRONMENTS. “

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to recognize each individual purchaser and match selections to his or her food preferences, taking into consideration concerns such as food allergies. Who is entitled to know about those allergies? Would the company that employs the individual be made aware? What would be the implications? Issues such as these—related to how people manage their digital destinies—may require regulatory frameworks or legislation. iMinds’ multidisciplinary research approach focuses strongly on the interaction between human beings and technology, looking directly at ethical, social and economic implications of the Internet of Things.

MAKING INTELLIGENCE DISTRIBUTABLEPeople often use the term ‘smart devices’ when talking about the kinds of things that will make up the IoT. Smart implies that the devices themselves either possess some intelligence of their own or at least deliver information as part of a higher-order system that can translate data into actions.

The third main question facing researchers is where that intelligence should live. Several answers have been proposed. At one extreme, some suggest all processing and intelligence should live in the cloud, making the IoT infrastructure in essence a single, macro infrastructure. This has the advantage of making communication relatively easy—everything talks to the cloud—but it comes with a control cost. If a specific actuator is attempting to lock or unlock a single container on a ship, for example, it can talk only to the cloud: there is no direct one-to-one interaction available between the actuator and the device. This could introduce delays and, of course, cause potentially massive network congestion if all traffic is flowing into and out of the cloud.At the other extreme is the suggestion that intelligence should be embedded in each individual device. This permits all kinds of one-to-one interactions, but makes it virtually impossible to obtain a macro view of the entire network. Going back to the point made above about plug-and-play

A RESEARCH PROGRAM FOR BRINGING THE IOT TO LIFE

In October 2014, iMinds kickstarted a strategic Internet of Things research program, tackling a number of the most fundamental and demanding research challenges – from low-level platform design and connectivity to decision support at the highest abstraction layers for the Wisdom of Things. The IoT strategic research program will develop and demonstrate solutions and concepts that improve performance beyond today’s state-of-the-art technologies by at least one order of magnitude. The program involves 20 of iMinds’ most forward looking and promising researchers in the IoT domain.

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SYSTEMS SHOULD

HAVE THE FLEXIBILITY TO MIGRATE

INTELLIGENCE TO THE BEST

SPOT.

capabilities, users will want to establish high-level expectations of outcomes and performance for IoT applications: but with each device as its own autonomous agent, there is essentially no way to know if those expectations are being met.

Furthermore, many of the devices in the Internet of Things will be significantly resource-constrained. While processors continue to miniaturize and advance, and battery lives continue to extend, there is only so much computing a small, single sensor can support. As a result, functions like authentication can’t typically be performed at the device level, because they require too much computing power.

As is so often the case, there is no single solution for determining exactly where intelligence should sit in the Internet of Things, but as a general rule the answer will lie somewhere in the middle of the two extremes—a hybrid scenario in which certain ‘thinking’ happens at the device level while other functions, such as the generation of encrypted keys for secure

transactions, will occur in the cloud.This is the approach advanced by iMinds in its research, with systems having the flexibility to migrate intelligence to the best spot—closer to the sensor in some cases or toward the cloud back-end in others, in a truly distributed and ever-shifting fog. Again, this is where the importance of a managerial middleware layer is crucial. Someone, the user, must define the overall goal for the system (for instance, to ensure a particular shipping container maintains a specific internal temperature); the middleware must determine how this will be done, evaluating all the alternatives in a dynamic way. Maybe it will be most efficient to have the container sensor evaluate its real-time data in situ, or maybe it will be more energy-efficient to pass the task along to the nearest gateway.

ENABLING SELF-OPTIMIZATION AND ADAPTATIONIdeally, just as IoT solutions will be self-configuring for plug-and-play implementation, they will also be self-optimizing, able to distribute and redistribute processing and


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intelligence according to the evolving demands of the system. A good example comes from the use of robots in manufacturing settings.

Currently, robots use cameras for wayfinding. These cameras are statically integrated. If a new camera is installed in the factory ceiling, the existing robots won’t use it because they don’t know it’s there and can’t communicate with it. However, if some intelligence is shifted into the factory Internet so that the robots can be alerted a new camera has been deployed—and then find it, search for the protocols they need to communicate with it, download those protocols and integrate them—the system gains an evolutionary capability that will allow it to continue to make optimal use of deployed resources on a real-time, ongoing basis. This kind of capability is in fact going to be essential when IoT deployments reach scales at which manually controlling each independent machine becomes prohibitively complex. In the past few years, iMinds researchers have been building expertise in smart manufacturing and robotics control to address precisely these kinds of requirements.

THE WAY FORWARDThe Internet of Things will radically transform the ways we interact with our world and control our surroundings. It will be accompanied—and enabled—by the ongoing massive increase in the number of connected devices, the so-called ‘Big Bang of Things’.

To realize the vision of the IoT, researchers must solve three primary technical challenges: making the Internet of Things plug-and-play; ensuring it can function reliably and securely; and determining how best to distribute intelligence throughout it for optimal performance. Non-technical challenges must be addressed as well. While the IoT is a network of objects, its applications are for people. This matters because human expectations of usability and reliability, and concerns about privacy and security, will be some of the crucial challenges to overcome in making the Internet of Things real and successful.

The complexity of these challenges demands the application of broad expertise—in social sciences, public policy, hardware design,

cryptography, network protocols, middleware development and application development, to name a few. iMinds, with its broad, multidisciplinary base, is well-positioned to bring together the required disciplines, in collaboration with the industry, to develop the kinds of solutions required. Today iMinds is working on a software development kit for application developers to program IoT applications without requiring a detailed understanding of the underlying architecture. Early tutorials have been fruitful: after a half-day, developers were able to program simple applications. As well, iMinds is working on a state-of-the-art operating system based on the open source Contiki operating system, creating a platform for future IoT development—and bringing the concept of a true Internet of Things one step closer to reality.


WE CURRENTLY

HAVE 50 UNITS IN THE FIELD BEING

EVALUATED BY CUSTOMERS.

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Q: What are the outstanding challenges in bringing the Internet of Things to the shipping industry?

Jan Van Herbruggen: Sensor technology—a key enabler of the Internet of Things—has been evolving since the 1990s, but there are still a handful of practical issues that need to be solved. Power is one. Sensors and transmitters need a power supply, which of course isn’t available in a shipping container. So you have to rely on batteries. But batteries have a finite lifespan, and if they wear out too quickly they make the whole system impractical. The current Zigbee wireless protocol for sensor-to-sensor communication is quite energy intensive. On top of that, it is neither capable of offering ubiquitous external connectivity to the Internet nor providing accurate positioning. So the first challenge is to develop suitable technology of sufficiently low voltage batteries that can last years without being replaced while at the same time ensuring that all tracking and monitoring requirements can be met.

The physical environment of a loaded vessel also poses difficulties. Containers on ships are stacked: the ones in the middle are boxed in by steel on all sides, creating what’s called a Farraday cage—a shield that blocks electromagnetic signals like radio waves and wireless. So the question is how to get information out from the middle of the stack up to a satellite.

Q: Are those challenges what led you to connect with iMinds?

Jan Van Herbruggen: iMinds had actually come to me on a different project involving wireless and rail transport. Through that initiative I connected with Ingrid Moerman, an iMinds researcher based out of Ghent University. She asked me about the feasibility of GPS tracking and monitoring of shipping containers. I admit, I was skeptical: I knew the power issues, the transmission issues. But Ingrid was persuasive! So we launched a project in 2010.

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SETTING SAIL FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS

Shippers moved more than eight billion tonnes of cargo around the world in 2013. With fuel costs rising, competition intensifying and

logistics increasingly ‘just in time’, the precise monitoring and tracking of containers is only going to become more important. Belgium’s Track4C is proving out its conviction that the Internet of Things will open up a whole

new world of capabilities for container tracking.

Leveraging its proximity to the Port of Antwerp, Track4C specializes in end-to-end container and cargo tracking. The company emerged out of a collaboration between wireless and mobile computing company Multicap and digital research center iMinds to overcome some of the fundamental technical challenges associated with container tracking. We spoke with Track4C’s JAN VAN HERBRUGGEN to learn more about the innovative technology his company is developing.


Q: And here you are, four years later, with a product currently being evaluated by the marketplace. Can you describe that journey?

Jan Van Herbruggen: In terms of research approach, we tackled the power issue first. We went right back to basics. We knew a lot of modern programming and protocols use too much energy, so we took our inspiration from programming in the 1980s, when there was much less memory and power to work with. We also created a proprietary wireless protocol to use instead of Zigbee—again to deal with power drain. What we ended up with was

a small, low voltage device with batteries that last three to five years. We’re working to extend that battery life to seven or eight years as a next step.

Then we turned to the transmission issue—how to get the signal out from containers in the middle of a stack. Our solution was a sort of ‘signal relay’: a container in the middle would send its signal to an adjacent container, which would pass it along to the container beside it, and on and on until it reaching a node on the ship that collects and stores all the data for transmission to the customer.

Q: What are the potential applications of your technology?

Jan Van Herbruggen: Tracking is the main thing: customers want to know where their product is, how long it’s taking to travel, whether there are delays, things like that. But there’s a lot more information that can be gathered. The sensors can monitor conditions inside the container, for example, which is critical if you’re shipping perishable items or temperature-sensitive products. Another benefit is security. We can monitor the opening and closing of the doors, so we know a sealed container has remained sealed. That

SETTING SAIL FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS

WE TOOK OUR INSPIRATION FROM PROGRAMMING IN

THE 1980’S.

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helps discourage theft, and—very critically—helps speed things up at customs. If agents know a container hasn’t been opened since it was last checked, there’s no need to search it again. All this information can be collected and stored, and we provide an application the customer can subscribe to, allowing them to access it all, and use it to improve the efficiency of their shipping practices.

Q: Is the market ready for this type of device?

Jan Van Herbruggen: There’s certainly a demand for the type of data. But there are many different players involved: shippers, ship owners, container owners, so the market can be tricky to navigate. And depending on the size of the company, they approach this type of solution differently. Smaller companies prefer to buy a solution once and focus their spending, while larger companies would rather stretch their expenses out over time through a service-based model. The product has value in both scenarios: we need to be flexible in how we make it available.

Q: Where is Track4C technology currently deployed?

Jan Van Herbruggen: We finished our prototype in 2012 and currently have 50 units in the field being evaluated by customers. Feedback has been very positive. Customers are satisfied, particularly with the increased security: they don’t have to hedge against loss as much as they used to, which increases their working capital. We’ve gotten some feedback from a pharmaceutical company that was very pleased with how the devices allowed them full control over the supply chain.

Q: So what’s next?

Jan Van Herbruggen: We’re planning to scale up, of course. We’re also looking at enabling ‘supplied communication’, which essentially means that individual containers are tracked until loaded onto a ship, and then the entire ship is tracked—with container data collected by a node on the ship. There are efficiencies in that. We’re also moving to proof of concept with pallet-level tracking inside containers, and are developing a

dashboard that gives customers full control of the data being monitored. The applications go beyond shipping, too: from garbage collection to parking spaces. Really, the possibilities are endless.

ABOUT IMINDS’ MONITORING OF CONTAINERS PROJECTThe Monitoring of Containers (MoCo) project, which ran from April 2010 till March 2012, investigated the design and implementation of a wireless network system to monitor and track products stored in shipping containers. In contrast to existing solutions, MoCo wanted to create a system suitable for stacked containers that monitors the position, environmental condition and security of shipped products from point of origin to final destination. Building on MoCo, the Control and Management of Constrained Devices (COMACOD) project is now looking at data transfer, configurability and management of constrained tracking devices with the goal of creating more efficient, flexible, manageable, automated and reusable tracking and monitoring systems for a variety of markets.

ABOUT TRACK4CFounded in 2012 and led by a management team with extensive experience in telecoms and other diverse fields. Track4C is supported by a network of business incubators, including iMinds, The University of Ghent, IWT (Agency for innovation by science and technology) and several other Flemish government initiatives. Significant funding has come from leading venture capital firms in Belgium, including Qbiq, PMV and iMinds.


WEAVING TEXTILE MANUFACTURING INTO

THE INTERNET OF THINGS

Intelligent weaving machines that are part of the Internet of Things (IoT) can warn textile mill operators of maintenance requirements long before equipment problems arise. They can also pinpoint opportunities to make operations more efficient. Recognizing these potential benefits, Belgium’s Picanol is working to overcome the key technical challenges involved in integrating IoT technologies into harsh manufacturing environments.


Q: When did Picanol first start thinking about bringing its machines into the Internet of Things?

Matthias Marescaux: We’ve been looking at interconnecting machines and collecting data since the 1990s. We saw it as a way to differentiate ourselves from competitors and add value to our product. But for a long time the technology wasn’t ready. Most customers didn’t have an intranet on their production floors. Wireless networks weren’t widespread. The cloud didn’t exist, either, so there was no place to store data or make it available for the types of applications and processes that would make this data useful. Picanol has a heritage of being early technology adopters, however, so if a technology isn’t ready, we follow it until it is. That’s where we are today. The technology has finally caught up with the inspiration.

Q: What are some IoT applications for the textile industry?

Matthias Marescaux: Proactive and reactive maintenance are key ones. With intelligence embedded in a networked weaving machine you can monitor metrics like oil temperature, for example. You collect the data, run an algorithm on it once a day, know if one or more machines is exceeding a given threshold and so might need to be serviced. Reactive maintenance goes a step further, so that machines can be shut down remotely if a threshold is exceeded by a certain amount, preventing further damage. To support these various functions, we’re working on two architectures: one is a point-to-point solution that connects individual machines to each other and to human operators, and the other gathers data from all the machines for comparison and storage on a single server.

A pioneering manufacturer of weaving machines for more than 75 years, Picanol partnered with digital research center iMinds to reimagine its products in the context of the Internet of Things—evolving traditional weaving machines into smart, connected devices. We spoke with Picanol’s R&D Engineer, MATTHIAS MARESCAUX, to learn about the company’s approach to the Internet of Things.

>>

THE TECHNOLOGY HAS FINALLY CAUGHT UP WITH THE INSPIRATION.

“

“


To end up with a robust solution for these two different architectures, we are collaborating with iMinds.

Q: Are your customers all looking for the same types of data?

Matthias Marescaux: We have a very diverse customer base, and they all need different types of data because their business models are very different. Many of the textile mills focus on producing huge quantities—sometimes in high-volume plants where production never stops and a single machine may put out 4,000 square meters of material a day. For our customers, preventing stops is critical, so we would collect data to help them proactively prevent breakdowns. Other customers have very low thresholds for error—makers of airbags or parachutes, for example, can’t allow more than one mistake per 100,000 insertions. So their sensor data will be looking for issues

that affect quality. The question is, how do we build a solution that accommodates all the various data collection needs?

Q: What’s the solution?

Matthias Marescaux: What’s needed is a platform that is adaptable to the kinds of requirements I just mentioned and can keep up with evolving hardware. In a good year, we build several thousand machines, which would mean thousands of chipsets. That volume is, however, not enough for us to convince a manufacturer to build a chipset that lasts 10 years. So the chips will have to change with some regularity, but we don’t want to have to change the firmware and software every time that happens. We have developed a solution that will last, that will evolve and is flexible. iMinds has been working with us on this.

WEAVING TEXTILE MANUFACTURING INTO THE INTERNET OF THINGS

WE WANT TO EQUIP OUR CUSTOMERS

TO RUN THEIR OPERATIONS AS

EFFICIENTLYAS POSSIBLE. “

“


ABOUT PICANOL

Picanol develops, produces and markets high-technology weaving machines. Today, about 2,600 weaving mills around the world use Picanol machinery—a deployed base of roughly 130,000 weaving machines in total. In 2013, Picanol Group’s revenues exceeded 559M€. With more than 2,000 employees worldwide, the Picanol Group has been listed on the Euronext Brussels index since 1966.

Q: What are some of the challenges that still need to be addressed?

Matthias Marescaux: There are some challenges with the layout of plants. Many factories have very limited available space with a high density of machines. Sensors need to be designed very compactly, in a way that keeps them protected from moving parts. Temperature is also a concern for our machines and the networks we’re trying to create. We sell our machines all over the world. In Asia, for example, we’ll have areas where it gets below zero in the wintertime, but the factories heat up immensely once production gets underway, so our machines have to start below freezing and then run in extreme heat. Moreover, these environments are often very dynamic, in that machines are turned off and on frequently, which could cause them to drop off the network.

Q: What’s next for your project?

Matthias Marescaux: We’re building use cases to show customers what they can do with IoT intelligence in their textile operations. We want them to see that our machines provide more value. The ability to optimize performance could mean, for example, reducing the number of times a machine has to stop in the course of a day—down from once every 30 minutes to once every 60. That increases productivity and profitability. Ultimately what we want is to equip our customers to run their operations as efficiently as possible.


DRIVING THE INTERNET OF THINGS ONTO THE FACTORY FLOOR

Wireless communication is an essential enabling technology for the Internet of Things, allowing devices to exchange information in dynamic environments where cabling isn’t a practical option. Yet fast, reliable wireless connectivity can be elusive when those same environments are full of structures and machinery that obstruct signal

transmission. Volvo’s ALEC PAEPENS and KRIS VAN CAUWENBERGE share some of their experience trying to bring stable wireless communication into their company’s

production halls - in pursuit of the installation of Internet of Things applications.

Q: When did Volvo first become interested in wireless technologies - as a preamble to pursuing the installation of Internet of Things applications?

Kris Van Cauwenberge: It was around 1997. In our warehouses, we started using handheld terminals, which proved particularly useful: instead of going back and forth with paper lists for inventory, workers would simply enter information directly into the terminals, saving time and minimizing the potential for mistakes. It was similar in the factory, where we started using forklifts equipped with wireless devices to help track and guide them around the facility, like a simplified, in-house GPS.

Q: What were the challenges at the time?

Kris Van Cauwenberge: Honestly, the solution worked fairly well. Of course, we were using a narrowband connection, and the transmissions were very basic, very simple. Just

text, no complicated information. Today that’s certainly not the case. We need to do much more with our wireless connections: send richer data, support real-time tracking, enable voice communication, so our technology and network needs are much more demanding.

Q: What sorts of Internet of Things applications are you exploring today?

Alec Paepens: In the factory, we use technology to instantly request refills of parts on the line through PDAs. And we have a huge fleet of automated guided vehicles (AGVs) driving around with chassis: these are equipped with wireless trackers and sensors and connected by carefully placed antennae. Applications like these are shaping up our ‘Internet of Things’.

Q: Are there issues you need to solve to make those applications possible?

Kris Van Cauwenberge: There are some challenges. The biggest is the constantly changing geography of our warehouses and production lines. In the warehouse, wooden crates full of metal parts are sometimes stacked up like ‘walls’ that move and change very often. That has a severe impact on wireless coverage. We can’t be constantly redeploying cables, and moving access points—or adding new ones—takes time and planning. As well, our AGVs and wireless-enabled forklifts move as such speeds that it can be very difficult to maintain a connection.

Alec Paepens: Security is a big challenge, as well. Obviously, with so much automation, and so much proprietary information flowing back and forth, we need a secure network. But the more robust the security infrastructure becomes, the more complex it is, and the bigger the barrier to successful wireless connections. There’s also the interaction between clients and access points, which are usually made by different companies. >>


It shouldn’t be an issue, since providers are supposed to be consistent with IEEE standards. But in our experience, that isn’t always the case—which can cause problems with devices, clients and access points establishing and maintaining robust connections.

Kris Van Cauwenberge: Device interaction is a big issue in the warehouses. Currently, we’re using Bluetooth headsets that connect to terminals. We’re dealing with a lot of interference, though, especially when you get a lot of devices working close together. And that happens quite often, as we often have uneven usage patterns. At certain times, in certain areas, you might not have any devices connecting at all, while in other areas we have too many devices trying to connect and authenticate.

Q: What’s the solution?

Alec Paepens: It’s all about creating a secure, reliable infrastructure that can be installed once and maintained independently of

the changes to the layout in the factories and warehouses. And we need it to support multiple devices, multiple technologies, in a way that minimizes interference or dropped connections. That’s where iMinds’ FORWARD project comes into play.

Q: How did you become involved with iMinds?

Alec Paepens: Initially, we were involved in another project: iMinds had asked us to sit on a steering committee reviewing certain research results. We got to talking about our use of wireless in a production environment and found we were a perfect match for the FORWARD project, which began in 2014 and will continue through to the end of 2015.

Q: FORWARD involves a number of different organizations. How do they all contribute?

Alec Paepens: With Arcelor, we can offer a number of use cases: what we’re using wireless for, what we’re

IT’S ALL ABOUT EMBEDDING

INTELLIGENCE. YOU NEED AN INTERNET OF

THINGS.

““

DRIVING THE INTERNET OF THINGS ONTO THE FACTORY FLOOR


ABOUT IMINDS’ FORWARD PROJECTThe iMinds FORWARD (Factories Operating on Robust Wireless Automation: Research and Design) project is bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders to research and develop wireless solutions for industrial applications. These should make the factories of the future more intelligent, more efficient and more profitable. Project partners include Arcelor Mittal Belgium, Egemin NV, Excentis, Siemens and Volvo Group Belgium.

ABOUT VOLVOThe Volvo Group is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of trucks, buses, construction equipment, drive systems for marine and industrial applications; we also provide complete solutions for financing and service. Volvo’s Ghent plant is one of the largest truck assembly factories in the Volvo Group. It assembles over 35.000 trucks a year.

It is also home to the Volvo Group’s world’s largest spare parts distribution center for trucks, buses, construction equipment and marine & industrial engines. With over 200,000 part numbers in the warehouse, the distribution center handles more than 6,8 million order lines per year.

planning to do with it, what are the challenges. Egemin NV specializes in wireless solutions for warehouses, so they offer invaluable insight. Excentis does a lot of research in wireless technology, making performance measurements for different cards and networks, testing against product specifications. And Siemens provides a range of wireless technology and access points for testing. iMinds has the cross-disciplinary expertise to weave all of this together and elevate it into the context of the Internet of Things. While all of this focus on problem solving around wireless communication is vital, iMinds holds the bigger picture in mind of using that wirelessly connected environment to allow devices to intelligently monitor and exchange information.

Q: How will production at Volvo change with the rise of a true Internet of Things?

Kris Van Cauwenberge: It would be a great help if we could, for example, equip our conveyors and

automatic strapping machines, as well as our warehouse vehicles with intelligent sensors. Right now, we’ve got more than 300 forklifts that require manual maintenance. We can only service them and check for problems when they’re not being used, which isn’t a lot of the time. With IoT-enabled technology, we can shift to a proactive approach to maintenance, collecting performance data in real time and preventing problems before they bring down the vehicles or production installations.

Alec Paepens: In our Ghent factory, we also envision enhancing our forklifts with devices and sensors that combine tracking with picking. So we could do more work, higher quality work, and perhaps increase productivity to attract new models to the plant. It’s all about embedding intelligence into the system—and for that, you need an intelligent network, and intelligent machines. You need an Internet of Things.


USERS WILL NEED GREATER INSIGHT INTO

WHAT THEIR IOT APPLICATIONS

ARE DOING. “

“


AN INTERNET OF THINGS IS STILL AN INTERNET FOR PEOPLEThe Internet of Things (IoT) will bring unprecedented convenience to our daily lives—making our homes and workplaces responsive to our needs and giving us intuitive control over our environments. But who will be accountable for the intelligence embedded in the objects that make up the IoT? How will we, as individuals, be sure our right to privacy is protected in a world of ‘things’ that know our preferences and habits? iMinds researchers, such as KATLEEN GABRIELS, are committed to asking questions like these, knowing the answers will shape our society in essential ways for decades to come.

THE SEEDS HAVE BEEN SOWNWhile the IoT is only just emerging, the proliferation of smart devices in recent years has already exposed some of the social implications of living in a world of intelligent things.

Most of us as smartphone users, for example, are only vaguely aware of the data collected, pushed and pulled in the background by our devices and accessed by a variety of programs, such as geo-location, email, social media and calendaring apps.

Web searching is another example. Search and recommendation engines employ all kinds of optimization algorithms to improve search results. The underlying mechanisms are invisible to users, yet have a profound impact on which data are displayed.

Researchers call this the ‘black box problem’—and it will only be compounded in the Internet of Things. With data being handled deep in the background by billions of devices, technology stands


to become increasingly opaque, reducing users’ knowledge of, or control over, functionality. This will be a problem not just for individuals but also for organizations: already today, technology-driven enterprises rely on proprietary solutions (such as Google’s Gmail) over which their internal IT teams have limited control.

OPENING UP THE BLACK BOXOne of the keys to a transparent Internet of Things is creating a standardized, open source platform that will give users greater insight into what their IoT applications are doing.

iMinds is developing such a platform, building on the open source Contiki Operating System, which is designed to run on the kinds of low-power wireless devices that will make up the Internet of Things. The challenge is to provide an open foundation that gives users more control while at the same time ensuring strong security to protect individual and corporate data. To put it simply,

the platform should be open but the data must be closed.

An open platform alone, however, is not enough to guarantee user control and privacy. The solution can’t be for every user to become a technical expert. What can be done is to raise public awareness of individual rights and responsibilities and the value of keeping data private.

iMinds is currently working with the Flemish government on the Media Wisdom project (www.mediawijs.be), a research-driven initiative to raise technology awareness amongst the general public. As part of this project, for instance, iMinds researchers are conducting privacy studies to determine the kinds of information younger users disclose through social media.

CONDUCTING MORAL FIELDWORKIf an informed public is key to successfully realizing the vision of the Internet of Things, so are informed public policy and legislation. Privacy and data

TO WHAT DEGREE CAN WE RELY ON MACHINES TO MAKE

THE RIGHT DECISIONS? “

“

AN INTERNET OF THINGS IS STILL AN INTERNET FOR PEOPLE


security are just two of many IoT-related issues policymakers will need to address, and potentially are among the most straightforward. More challenging questions relate to responsibility and accountability in an increasingly automated world.

As we depend more and more on a network of devices made by numerous manufacturers, to what degree can we rely on machines to make the right decisions and where do we place the blame when the wrong choice is made? Wired magazine recently devised a thought experiment in which a self-driving vehicle about to crash must choose whether to swerve into a lane containing a packed SUV or into a lane with a smaller automobile. If the computer’s choice causes a fatality, who is accountable? The computer? Its programmer?

While the question is (partly) speculative, the need for an answer is not. Laws and regulations will have to be clear in the interest of the public good. iMinds is studying ethical issues like these by fusing

theory and practice through “moral fieldwork”, which applies empirical data collection and analysis to philosophical questions, going out in the field for surveys and studies that can provide hard data to evaluate moral issues.

The questions raised by the Internet of Things are complex but not entirely new. As mentioned, the technological developments of the past decade have already introduced issues related to privacy and data security: it is the specifics—and magnitude—that will differ in the IoT.

Further research will help us determine how to adapt and evolve existing policies and laws to encompass the challenges of the Internet of Things, ensuring we enjoy all the benefits of a connected world while protecting citizens’ rights and freedoms.


THOMAS KALLSTENIUSiMinds Research & Innovation Director

LIST OF SUBJECT-MATTER EXPERTS WHO CONTRIBUTED TO THIS PAPER

STEFAN BOUCKAERT iMinds - IBCN - UGentBusiness Developer iMinds Technical Testing

KRIS VAN CAUWENBERGETechnical Support Manager Volvo

JEROEN FAMAEY iMinds - IBCN - UGentPost-Doctoral Researcher

KATLEEN GABRIELS iMinds - SMIT - VUBDoctoral Researcher

JAN VAN HERBRUGGENCEO Multicap

JEROEN HOEBEKE iMinds - IBCN - UGentAssistant Professor

DANNY HUGHES iMinds - DistriNet - KU LeuvenAssistant Professor

WOUT JOSEPH iMinds - WiCa - UGentProfessor

THOMAS KALLSTENIUSiMinds Research & Innovation Director

KRIS LUYTEN iMinds - EDM - UHasseltProfessor

MATTHIAS MARESCAUXR&D Engineer Picanol

INGRID MOERMAN iMinds - IBCN - UGentProfessor

SAM MICHIELS iMinds - DistriNet - KU LeuvenIndustrial Research Manager

ALEC PAEPENSNetwork & Telecom Manager Volvo

WIM VERHAVERT iMinds - CUO - KU LeuvenResearcher

iMinds editorial team: Sven De Cleyn, Koen De Vos, Thomas Kallstenius, Els Van Bruystegem,

Wim Van Daele, Stefan Vermeulen

Copy: Ascribe Communications

Design: Coming-Soon.be

Photography: Lieven Dirckx, Nils Blanckaert

©2014 iMinds vzw - CC-BY 4.0. You are free to share and adapt the content in this publication

with reference to iMinds.

Additional content will be published on www.iminds.be/insights.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

about iMinds’ expertise in the field of Internet of Things,please contact [email protected]

iminds insights - internet of things

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