Sophia Antipolis, 29 October 2018

IoT moving forward in cross domain sectors

As the IoT week event in ETSI came to an end last Friday, there was no doubt that the huge tractor in front of the building was the star of the week. But this wasn’t only for the size of its tyres…

The showcase was indeed a worldwide first: a tractor connected to a car to mitigate the risk of collision on the road and bring down the 400 fatal yearly car accidents caused by farm vehicles that are not visible when coming into the road. Using ETSI’s ITS-G5 standard and the oneM2M gateway, the use case demonstrated how standards help provide interoperability between two sectors such as agriculture and automotive.

Other showcases proved how products based on the oneM2M platform have evolved from prototypes to commercial applications over the last 5 years. Implemented in all parts of the world, they addressed such diverse domains as smart cities, smart agriculture, automotive, smart home, smart living, testing, smart body area, aquiculture or healthcare. There was also the opportunity to test interoperability with interworking platforms or emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence or blockchain. Large global companies, SMEs, start-ups, R&D centres worked together to build up these projects and put them on the market, showing the dynamic IoT ecosystem and how the diversity of actors and expertise can be a real asset for industry at large.

Developers were happy to go into details in a tutorial dedicated to IoT applications and to build small projects with developers’ kits provided to them. In parallel, security experts discussed the challenges for IoT security and privacy. While the chair of the ETSI cybersecurity committee gave a list of very similar issues to those found in desktop OS vulnerabilities in the 90’s, he also gave a set of 3 main recommendations for IoT devices security: no default passwords, implement a vulnerability disclosure policy and keep software updated.

Smart cities was another hot topic of the event. It was addressed through use cases, standardization challenges and first implementations. As was outlined by the speakers, there is no ‘one size fits all’ for cities as they have various needs including those for towns, islands and rural areas which are different from large urban areas. If the cities’ priority is to solve societal issues, it’s a fact that interoperability of the various types of data collected is crucial, but standards are then essential.

Some very positive feedback from commercial implementations were presented. Bordeaux metropolis smart lighting in France was an example and their goals were achieved: reduce energy consumption, optimize services suggested for users by the metropolis and measure the impact of the deployment of street-connected infrastructures. A few Irish cities are also deploying several services. Other cities have implemented, or are going to implement, valet parking, highway use, platooning or urban driving for instance, this includes Livorno in Italy, Tampere in Finland, Versailles in France, Daejeon in South Korea, Eindhoven in the Netherlands or Vigo in Spain.

This year, SmartBAN, smart body area network, was also a new and very interesting topic. The use of wearables and body sensor devices is rapidly growing in the Internet of Things (IoT). Addressing eHealth is of course a technology challenge, you need to deal with interoperability in heterogeneous use cases, low power, low latency, security, robust operation and the ability to interact with embedded intelligence in smart environments. ETSI’s technical committee on Smart BAN presented its work but other industry players, including a prominent sportswear actor, offered technology solutions and visions to solve these issues. Speakers concluded that SmartBAN can not only provide connectivity for our portable and wearable devices in the IoT, but it can also serve as the personal interface to the digital world, in particular the healthcare system of the future. To do so, new solutions are needed both technically and in terms of interoperability.

If you want to know more about this exciting week and our high level speakers, see the presentations on our website and click on this link.