Internet of things

Logic was very lucky to welcome prestigious guest speaker Professor Mischa Dohler (Kings College London), who stopped off on the way to a meeting about the launch of new telecommunications satellites to talk to our Year 12 IT students about the big data and the ‘internet of things’.

Simply put, the ‘internet of things’ is the concept of basically connecting any device with an on and off switch to the Internet (and/or to each other). This includes everything from smartphones, fridges, washing machines, headphones, lamps, wearable devices and almost anything else you can think of. This also applies to components of machines, for example a jet engine of an airplane or the drill of an oil rig. The analyst firm Gartner says that by 2020 there will be over 26 billion connected devices… That’s a lot of connections (some even estimate this number to be much higher, over 100 billion)!

Prof Dohler drew on the work of his pioneering company WorldSensing, who are developing new technologies to make smart cities a reality. For instance, sophisticated traffic monitoring systems, using a range of sensors, enable rapid parking and reduced congestion through central London. Another project involves setting hundreds of wireless sensors in infrastructure such as tunnels, dams and buildings to constantly monitor parameters such as strain, load, vibration, cracks and tilt in order to ensure safety and performance.

Professor Dohler has kindly invited a small number of students to visit the Kings College Lab to explore the cutting edge technologies being developed there.

To find out more visit worldsensing.com or view Prof Dohler’s recent Ted talk