Sep 08, 2010A few weeks ago, I wrote that "Internet of Things" had outlived its usefulness as a marketing term to explain what radio frequency identification does (see The Internet of Things Revisited). While I still believe that to be the case, a lot of valuable research is being conducted to connect objects to the Internet, so that they can be better tracked and managed. The Auto-ID Labs are spearheading this effort, and have helped to organize the second international Internet of Things conference, being held in Tokyo, Japan, from Nov. 29 to Dec. 1, 2010.
This three-day event aims to bring together leading researchers from academia and industry to elaborate on the major themes of the emerging Internet of Things. The conference will explore the technical requirements and business issues related to the use of the Internet of Things to address societal challenges. Speakers will explore such areas as health-monitoring systems to support the aging society, distributed awareness to predict natural disasters and react more appropriately, track-and-trace systems to reduce traffic congestion, product lifetime information to improve recyclability, transparency of transportation to reduce carbon footprints, and greater insights into various kinds of processes to improve optimization.
"In recent years, we have gained a rough understanding of what the Internet of Things really is," says Elgar Fleisch, a professor at ETH Zürich and the University of St. Gallen, the co-chair of the Auto-ID Labs, and the co-chair of the 2008 and 2010 Internet of Things events. "However, we still lack some of the essential global standards and infrastructures that would drive adoption on a broader scale."
The goal of the 2010 conference is to gather stakeholders to continue work on technical requirements and business needs to build the Internet of Things. "The existing Internet is just an infrastructure for the Internet of Things," says Jun Murai, a professor at Keio University, the chairman of the Auto-ID Labs' board of directors and the conference chair of Internet of Things 2010. "The Internet of Things is the key to solving many real-world problems. That is why we decided the conference theme to be IoT [Internet of Things] for a Green Planet at this time."
Keynote speakers, researchers and industry experts will discuss the immense potential for consumers and industry, as well as how items can be integrated with the Internet to sense, check and act, in order to fulfill known and latent consumer and business needs. Practitioners will report on the latest real-world implementations, applications and experiences.
In addition to the main conference on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, a preconference program on Nov. 29 will feature workshops focused on such dedicated topics as standards, prototyping, social and organizational aspects, and specific applications of the Internet of Things for interconnected and interoperable vehicles. Furthermore, tutorials will be offered regarding the fundamentals of today's core technologies of the Internet of Things, such as sensor networks, RFID and corresponding software frameworks.
For more information on Internet of Things 2010, visit www.iot2010.org or e-mail
info@iot2010.org.
Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal. If you would like to comment on this article, click on the link below. To read more of Mark's opinions, visit the RFID Journal Blog or the Editor's Note archive.