Latest Machine to Machine News
July 15th, 2011 admin
Creating a machine-to-machine infrastructure is a broad process. The chief components needed are sensors (could be wired, but usually wireless), an established network to relay the signals, and a computer with Internet access.
As a real-life example, let’s take a look at the important issue of water purification for public consumption. City officials are responsible for providing the community with drinkable water. To conduct their job satisfactorily they are required to monitoring of the water supply, the actual process of water treatment, and subsequently the resulting drinkable water.
As a first step of implementing an M2M solution, city engineers and crew would place sensors in the right positions. This means that the sensors need to be in an area for detecting contaminants in the natural water supply of a river or a lake as well as the main intakes. The sensors would further be placed in all the areas that cover the water purification process. Lastly, they would be placed in the outflow supply pipes leading to the homes and businesses where they are eventually to be used.
The benefit of such sensors is in their ability to send real-time data, commonly by wireless communications, which city engineers can monitor using proprietary software. The software will be able to show if such hazards as an oil spill has infiltrated the water supply or a certain change in a lake’s water due to runoff in a particular time of the year. The result would be to automatically alert the proper authorities for cleaning the spill and at the same time change the intake location so only non-contaminated water is treated.
This alert system would be beneficial for the city since only when a problem is detected, the authorities would be notified, therefore removing the need to regularly test the water by humans, which is a costly and time consuming endeavour.
Our lives are inextricably linked directly or indirectly to each other because of technological innovation, but what about the 50 billion machines found worldwide? Given this impressive figure, consider a world where not just the people, but each and every one of these machines are connected in a meaningful network, producing a useful flow of intelligence. This is not far fetched as it seems, and in fact this revolution has already began. Machine to Machine (M2M) is the term most used to represent the unification of devices with communications, by enabling the devices to become “intelligent” and transmit useful data to a computer server or another device, without direct human intervention. Machine-to-Machine is widely believed, by many companies that utilize M2M as well as market analysts, to become one of the most powerful and fastest growing innovations in the near future.
M2M technology makes it possible for one machine or device to communicate with other machines and devices seamlessly, in real-time, and anywhere in the world. This represents a breakthrough that will allow companies to substantially cut costs and increase revenues by analyzing the data and adapting accordingly to provide smart services to their customers.
In addition to an increase in profitability and efficiency of business operations, M2M technology also contains the promise of ushering new business opportunities. Two decades ago, it would have been hard to conceive of the impact that Internet technologies would have on connecting individuals and companies. With the realization of literally billions of machines now also becoming connected, the budding machine-to-machine communication market has already attracted noticeable investment by established companies and startups, from mobile providers to specialist hardware and software vendors. Such companies include Verizon, Sprint, Vodafone, Sierra Wireless, Motorola, IBM, General Electric, Qualcomm, Sensorlogic, Cisco, AT&T, and many others eager to capitalize on the growing potential of M2M networks.
The possible real-life applications of M2M can effectively be used in every industry, and improve our lives on a daily basis, including to: track a store’s inventory as it travels through the supply chain, send alerts to a repair person before or as an elevator stops working, inform a vending machine operator to restock low supplies, notify a gas station owner of a leaking fuel pump or tank, automate utility meter reading in houses and businesses, provide pay-as-you-drive insurance systems, remotely update digital billboards, monitor patient health at home using portable monitors, automatically send an alert to emergency services from a vehicle involved in a crash, and many more applications.
Our world is on the verge of one of the greatest technological transformations, providing “dumb” machines with an intelligent ability to convey valuable information that until now has gone untapped. With more astute companies already embracing M2M smart services and utilizing them to increase their competitive advantage and market share, it is time for everyone else to become aware of the next big step in technological innovation, as offered by machine to machine.