The Internet of Things: The Next Technological Revolution

Abstract

creates challenges with enormous technical, societal, economic, and political consequences. Consequently, a wide range of researchers from academia and industry, as well as businesses, government agencies, and cities, are exploring this exciting technology from three main perspectives: scientific theory, engineering design, and the user experience.Motivated by this more holistic view, the research community has moved its focus from the system to the end user. This shift aims to empower users by providing them with the knowledge required to understand and control their environment, as well as by offering new accessible and interactive interfaces that go beyond the traditional desktop.With this in mind, this special issue of Computer presents five recent research and deployment case studies. Two of the articles project our readers into futurist scenarios: one imagines nanotechnologies' penetration into embedded computing and electronics, while the other discusses the extent to which neuroscience will drive future IoT development. The remaining three articles offer detailed insight into technological solutions that are unleashing new forms of AI and programming constructs, and discuss their societal impact through end-user empowerment. All of the articles are at the forefront of the user-centered design approach.

A Cloud-Based Decision Support System for Self-Healing in Distributed Automation Systems Using Fault Tree Analysis

“…I NDUSTRIAL automation systems have been seriously influenced in the last decade by new information and communication technologies (ICT), such as multiagent systems (MAS) [1], service-oriented architecture (SOA) [2], cloud computing [3], and Internet-of-Things (IoT) [4]. The introduction of new ICT into automated manufacturing processes increases their abilities to adapt more intelligently to the changing conditions and requirements.…”

A Data-Oriented M2M Messaging Mechanism for Industrial IoT Applications

“…It is estimated that there will be over 50 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2020, and the rapid increase of the devices has started a new paradigm of computing in which all the objects become interactive [1] [2]. In this new computing paradigm, machines talk to one another to achieve some tasks automatically and intelligently for different application scenarios, including manufacturing, healthcare, home automation, supply chain, retailing, etc.…”

Energy-efficient active tag searching in large scale RFID systems

“…All the things in IoT could be automatically managed and inventoried by computers, and thus the management efficiency could be improved greatly. Currently, IoT is exploiting its application in a wide scope of industry fields [1][2][3][4].…”