Last March, Tech In Motion Chicago held a panel event discussing one of the hottest tech topics right now - the Internet of Things.
Almost every panelist would agree that the Internet of Things (or IoT) is such a fragmented market right now and we are just starting to chip the iceberg about where IoT could head in the future - from kitchens that are able to restock themselves to the construction industry where machines are able to predict when parts will break down and instantly order these parts before it happens to minimize time when the machine will be down. All avenues of IoT seem to have a common theme - increasing efficiency - whether in the home or in business.
We were honored to have the following panelists speak about what IoT means to them and what their company is doing in the IoT space:
Adam Justice is vice president and general manager of Grid Connect
Harold G. Clampitt is CEO and Founder of American RFID Solutions
Jason Kolb is CTO of Uptake
Mahesh Ramananjaiah is Senior Architect at HERE, a Nokia company
Aubrey Jackson is Senior Software Engineer at HERE, a Nokia company
Matt Krzus, a Lead Data Scientist with Kaplan, was our moderator for the evening.
Hear some other fantastic Tech in Motion speakers at a panel discussion near you!
The night kicked off with a presentation from HERE as they demonstrated how they have been working with Mercedes-Benz to create a prototype self-driving car. We were treated with a video about how they utilized their state-of-the-art mapping system to help navigate the vehicle. Following the IoT discussion at our event, we revisited each of our panelists to see if they had any final thoughts about the future of IoT.
Our moderator, Matt Krzus said: "One of the main risks to realizing the IoT vision as we talked about it is uncertainty in the legal and regulatory environment. Already we're seeing that companies want to mine their assets for value by sensoring them and then finding the value in the resulting data, but they rarely have the in-house firepower to carry that effort through to completion. But transferring data to an outside vendor can be tricky and complicated by regulatory environments.
This is a relatively new area characterized by using data whose ownership is very much up in the air. Everyone who hopes to capitalize on IoT is going to have to pay close attention to legislation and court rulings in these areas. Data ownership is a complex issue and the trillions of dollars we talked about is going to hinge on how it plays out."
Jason Kolb, the CTO of Uptake (one of the newest and fastest-growing players in the IoT scene here in Chicago) said, "Broadly speaking, it's not the connectivity of the objects but rather the story a person can get a computer to learn. My belief is that it's not necessarily the sensors or the ways people are attaching them to physical objects that matter, but rather the diversity of algorithms and experimental research that truly makes an impact. More specifically, I think deep learning holds a lot of promise in simplifying and making the use hand-engineered features almost obsolete. The applications are almost endless, and right now, the same algorithm that teaches a machine to play atari, will be that same algorithm that will teach a car to drive itself."
Big thanks to everyone that came out to our IoT event. We're looking forward to seeing how this tech trend continues to grow and make our lives more efficient.