Internet of things

TASSIMO is not just a coffee maker, it’s a Brewbot, an advanced brewing system made by the engineers at Bosch. The Brewbot is programmed to make seven different beverages at the touch of a button. That’s because Brewbot uses T DISCs, which are single-serve discs packed with a variety of coffees, teas and hot chocolates. The Brewbot reads the barcode found on each T DISC to know exactly what to make and how to brew it.

It’s this technology that distinguishes the TASSIMO Brewbot from regular brewers and guarantees a perfect cup of whatever you’re in the mood for every time.

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This event is the hands-on part of the Urban Internet of Things Workshop that takes place in Tokyo, that same day as part of the Internet of Things 2010 conference. We will gather a bunch of hackers, programmers, designers, architects, and business people under the same roof to discuss about the future of our cities. We will explore through demos, hands-on workshops, pecha-kuchas and beers how new technologies can be leveraged to engage citizens to access and use real-time data from cities. Hopefully a lot of beer and a fantastic mix of creative and technical people will help in doing this.

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This event is part of the Lift@home program where members of our community self-organize their mini event.

Vlad Trifa is a Research Associate working at ETH Zurich and at MIT SENSEable City Lab. His work focuses on the Web of things and how it will change the way we experience our cities in the near future.

At Lift11, Vlad will explain why the old vision of the internet of things was a fluke, where we can expect real changes and what is needed for those to happen. I interviewed him today to find out what he will talk about during Lift11 this February.

Vlad Trifa

Research Associate (CH)
MIT SENSEable City Lab / ETH Zurich
» View Lift11 speakers

Laurent Haug: The internet of things has been largely discussed around the world, yet few people really know what it is about. How did the field evolve in the past years?

Vlad Trifa: Few years ago, we were promised we would have one network with all our objects connected on it. There has been a reality check typical of nascent technological fields, where we in fact see hundreds of different actors all proposing solutions that in the end do not easily connect with each other. Making objects talk to each other still requires very high efforts and a lot of programming skills. The Web of Things attempts to reproduce the same growth mechanism than the Web, and the time has come to focus on making things more open, accessible and compatible. The simple standards the Web is built upon have proven to be an ideal medium for building scalable and flexible systems. Besides, unlike most exotic protocols used in the classic internet of things, Web standards are widely spread and used, so why not just leverage them for devices as well?

What projects are you working on?

I am working on a project called LIVE Singapore. It will be a platform where people can share their data about the city in real-time. For example, you will be able to get data on traffic in real time, and at the level of granularity you wish. We hope this will allow thousands of developers to build apps on top of that, and change the way citizens experience and interact with the city.

Which concrete applications do you expect to emerge?

Visualizations at first, applications to see what is happening. The data will allow us to understand what happens, where and when. Traffic is an obvious example, where you can know in real time the conditions on the streets of the city. Then one can imagine closing the loop to have more active applications. If I take the example of traffic again, it is going beyond simply knowing that there is an accident, but rerouting a person or parcel through a different path in real time. We expect applications to emerge in transport, logistics, decision making, and many more. By making invisible phenomenas visible, we will allow users to not only understand, but also react to information and make better decisions for themselves. These possibilities will be especially interesting for cities of course, and they should allow for better organization and more sustainable living. It will allow citizens to actively participate and shape their environment - from passive data consumers we will become more informed and able to make better decisions according to what's happening right now.

Beside team communications, this blog features posts written by community members. If you have a Lift account you can also share your thoughts and ideas by clicking here. Here is food for thought about privacy and the internet of things shared by Italian ICT and privacy law expert Nicola Fabiano.

We are living in a globalized era and the fast process of technologies evolution modify our lifestyles. In fact, with reference to the Internet of Things (IOT hereafter), there are issues related to privacy, with security and responsibility.

IOT system leads to the transfer of information over the Internet, using for instance RFID technology. Personal Information may be transmitted only when the subject where is installed the microchip is linked to a person.

Obviously, there are two possibilities regarding the connection to the person: (1) We could have a direct link when the user is aware of the possible transmission of personal data and lend consent to this. (2) Alternatively, the connection may be indirect when the object is not linked explicitly with the user but only through the use of information that belong to the person. Imagine if the person buys a object with RFID or similar technology, but it isn’t linked to the object. In the purchase process, if the person can be identified through payment with credit cards or loyalty cards that indicate the type product purchased, you could have an indirect connections.

In fact, the person may have previously provided his or her consent for the dissemination of data relating to purchases (the simplest example concerns the supermarkets or big chains) for advertising purposes. In this way, a connection could be achieved with the indirect result of the person connecting to those purchased.

In terms of privacy, may a person be protected? Who manages personal data? Where will this data be stored? Hence the responsibility to set and adopt appropriate security measures. Regarding the legal framework, IoT hence generate a privacy system sui generis, because we will have a system with a sum of single privacy right. Which is why we should talk about privacies instead of privacy.

"The Internet of Things is not what you think it is!". At Lift France, several great speakers will shed a new light on this concept: The "things" they will present are not just "smart" and connected, but also customizable, hackable, transformable, fully recyclable. They invite conversations and take part in them. They can be manufactured in highly decentralized units, in garages or at home. Some can even manufacture parts of themselves...

Bruce Sterling, the famous science fiction author credited with inventing the cyberpunk genre, has been turning his attention to design for several years. One of his latest books, Shaping Things, is "an essay about design, things and how we will move from the age of products and gizmos to the age of spimes" (a neologism that contracts "space" and "time").

Michael Shiloh is an engineer, hobbyist, researcher, artist, and educator. Michael works with foam core, concrete, computers, hot glue, steel, Linux, electronics, pneumatics, hydraulics, remote controls, and broken glass. He is one of the founders of MakingThings, and one of the key organizers of the OpenMoko open source community.