Another acronym you need to know about

ACRONYMS ARE EVERYWHERE in business, technology and popular culture.

NBC, ESPN, AT&T, CFO, IBM.

GMO, CAPTCHA, GIF.

YOLO, TGIF, OMG, LOL.

Most recognise these examples but what about IoT?

It stands for ‘Internet of Things’ – a term that describes interconnected devices - devices that can be connected to one another, and/or to the internet.

More specifically, it describes the network of objects – or things – that contain technology such as software or sensors that connect with other devices to exchange data.

In today’s modern digitally connected world, just about everything can be connected to another device or the internet.

Headphones, watches, stereos - even coffee makers and washing machines.

Remote health monitoring and emergency notification devices.

Automated technologies such as smart homes, security, traffic lights and toll collection systems.

Smart devices such as speakers and phones.

All these ‘things’ come under this umbrella term, IoT.

And so does the Foresense platform.

Foresense simplifies the collection of presence data and the analysis of action – and interaction – on-site in real world settings to provide real-time AI analytics of traffic inside and around any physical location with applications across government, commerce and industry for smarter, safer physical spaces.

Like automated systems and smart devices, Foresense has evolved due to technological convergence, where multiple technologies have come to merge into singular entities, a new-age sum of their many parts.

Smartphones combine GPS, music players, cameras, and internet access…and they also make phonecalls.

The smart home is actually a combination of systems for heating, cooling, lighting, door and gate locking and appliance control.

The Foresense platform works by placing numerous proprietary sensors around a physical space or location. The location can be relatively small – such as in a retail shopfront or apartment, or much larger in scale such as a farm or cattle station.

These sensors communicate with smartphones or specialised tags (agriculture) or wearables (child and aged care) to monitor movement and behaviour.

The sensors then relay this data via Wi-Fi to the internet, and on to the AI software which collates data and analyses trends.

The resultant data is accessed via the Foresense Dashboard, an internet portal where information is obtained from the graphical user interface.

The Foresense sensor is actually a convergent technology in itself – combining the ability to communicate with smartphones and the Foresense AI software with environmental sensors such as temperature, humidity and ambient light levels.

The sensors can even be equipped to allow automated control of other systems in industrial and agricultural applications such as water flow and heating/cooling, for example.

As you can see, Foresense is a highly relevant, contemporary example of an IoT platform where all of its component parts are interconnected with each other and the internet itself.

And as with all contemporary platforms concerned with the internet and online access, the growth of IoT has also grown concerns around data privacy and security.

Foresense recognises this – and Foresense works a little differently.

Foresense is blind to individual users, and their private data with a focus on bigger picture, rather than individual elements.

The platform sees only the signals smartphones emit; not passwords, emails, app data, GPS data or any other personal data that invades digital privacy.

It can be said that Foresense is actually innovating both interconnectivity and privacy in the age of IoT; an age where the two are so often at best uneasy bedfellows…and mutually exclusive at worst!