AUTHOR,
Ravi B R
Engineering Manager
Innovation has always been the main engine of an improved society throughout history. The latest transformations in IoT have taken the world to new heights, with smart cities, smart homes, pollution control systems, smart energy management, smart transportation, smart industries, and so on. The emerging paradigm of IoT enables the communication between electronic devices and sensors through the internet. And is progressively becoming an important aspect of our industries everywhere. Businesses across the globe are leveraging the use of the Internet of Things Services in various industries to create new and optimized business opportunities.
Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the Internet of Things (IoT)
What do you think is the most massively generated thing in an industrial process? It’s data. Data is everywhere and everything today runs on data, be it an industrial process or a home managed by smart monitoring devices. While smart homes may not present with severe complexities, smart industrial processes are a different ball game. To manage this massive amount of data generated in the industrial processes, and for the better management of the entire IoT ecosystem, industrialists currently lack the skillful human resources and reliable tools to utilize the big industrial data productively. And that’s where artificial intelligence will come to the rescue!
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, using computers to emulate the cognitive abilities of the natural intelligence of human minds. It allows computers and machines to function intelligently helping humankind to solve problems and facilitate effective working processes. In short, Artificial intelligence is a human-made tool designed by humans and demonstrated by machines.
AI has the power to manage itself as well as its applications intelligently and independently. This means that the utilization and optimization potential missed by the lack of skillful human resources or tools can be sufficiently overtaken by AI. The combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT will help businesses process this collected data and make useful insights to improve and optimize the business process.
In this age of Industry 4.0, where industries mostly rely on operational technology (OT) and its proficiency in managing manufacturing, supply chain, energy management, and human resources. The technological breakout of Artificial Intelligence into the realm of the Internet of Things in the age of disrupted the traditional industrial norms and took the industrial processes to a whole new level of precision.
Benefits of AI in IoT
- Intelligence integration
- Low unscheduled downtime
- Real-time behavior and reporting
- Enhanced control of risks
- Improved customer experience
But what is missing is the element of trust, which is required to fully embrace these technologies at scale.
How can Blockchain of Things bring trust to data: IoT and Blockchain
The importance of security in IoT cannot be overstated. Businesses everywhere are using several devices every day. These devices are almost always connected to the internet in some form or the other. By using the internet to gather, process, and share information, proper security is vital to protect the software, people, and data.
Trust and Confidence are the essential requirements for the end-users to fully adapt and rely on AI-based business processes. By offering a shared and decentralized distributed ledger, blockchain can improve trust, transparency, security, and privacy in the processes. Blockchain allows the transaction between two nodes in a permanent way and doesn’t require any third-party authentication. The Blockchain database can store a huge capacity for electronic information while also allowing users to access, monitor, and modify data. To manage big amounts of information, the databases use servers to house data.
A blockchain database differs from a more typical database in its structure. Information is stored in limited groups (also known as blocks), each with a set capacity. When a block is full, information moves to the next block, effectively creating a chain of blocks: hence, blockchain. A typical database uses a table-like format where data is easily accessible. Since blockchains are segmented, accessing information isn’t as simple—everything is connected and documented, so accessibility and verification tend to be more secure.
Let’s explore how Blockchain can enrich AI by bringing trust to data.
A blockchain ledger can be used as a digital rights management system, allowing your data to be licensed to the AI provider under your terms, conditions, and duration. The ledger would act as an access management system storing the proofs and permission by which a business can access and use the user’s data.
Blockchain will help mitigate IoT-related security and scalability issues in the following ways:
- Eliminates the need for trust among the parties concerned about the overwhelming amount of data produced by IoT devices
- Stores the massive IoT data with added layers of authentication and robust levels of encryption that essentially make overwriting existing data records nearly impossible
- Offers transparency by allowing anyone to access the network to monitor transactions that have occurred in the past
- Provides a clear means of determining the particular source of data leakage and taking swift remedial action in case of an attack
- Enables millions of connected devices to process transactions quickly and while enabling fail-proof communication
- Provides a viable solution to facilitate the processing of the vast number of transactions as the number of interconnected devices increases
- Reduces costs by removing the processing overheads related to IoT gateways (Eg., hardware, or overhead communication costs), thus creating trust among the stakeholders
Examples of Convergence of Blockchain, IoT, and AI
Example-1:
In the case of Cars, IoT collects high-quality data from different cars, AI optimizes fuel consumption,
and Blockchain provides a secure immutable database featuring data privacy for car data and enables tokenization of cars.
Example-2:
In the case of Camera, IoT collects high-quality data from different cameras, AI optimizes alerts and notifications based on different objects or events, and Blockchain provides a secure immutable database featuring data privacy for camera data and enables tokenization of Camera.
Example-3:
In the case of Machines, IoT collects high-quality data from different machines, AI optimizes the production and maintenance of the machine, and Blockchain provides a secure immutable database featuring data privacy for machine data and enables tokenization of machines.
The way forward
The combining forces of the three remarkable technological innovations, can improve business processes, bring new business models into existence, drive digital transformation, and disrupt the future of industries.
- IoT will drive the automatization of industries and user-friendliness of business processes, which is essential for industries.
- AI improves processes by detecting patterns and optimizing outcomes of these processes.
- Blockchain will increase the trust, transparency, security, and privacy of business processes by providing a shared, decentralized distributed ledger.
IoT, Blockchain, and AI technologies are providing tremendous benefits for security, transparency, immutability, privacy, and automation of the business process. However, the impact of these technologies is even higher when they are combined. In order to leverage efficiency gains, IoT combined with AI and Blockchain will be the way for the new age of digitization. This convergence will undoubtedly increase the quality of data management by reaching a higher degree of standardization, privacy, and security of data.
Our engineers at TA engage with these technologies in order to realize efficiency gains. Blockchain technology, combined with IoT and AI, will pave the way to a new age of digitization.
Viola!
You have reached the end of this article, thank you for reading.
We have more interesting pieces of information on IoT and other related topics, jump in to know more