Though many people often think about Internet of Things (IoT) and robotics technology as separate fields, these two niches seem to be growing simultaneously as we find new ways to engineer each one.

The IoT and robotics communities are coming together to create The Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT). The IoRT is a concept in which intelligent devices can monitor the events happening around them, fuse their sensor data, make use of local and distributed intelligence to decide on courses of action and then behave to manipulate or control objects in the physical world.

The IoT is a network of things that are connected to the internet, including IoT devices and IoT-enabled physical assets ranging from consumer devices to sensor-equipped connected technology. These items are an essential driver for customer-facing innovation, data-driven optimization, new applications, digital transformation, business models and revenue streams across all sectors.

IoT devices are usually designed to handle specific tasks, while robots need to react to unexpected conditions. Artificial intelligence and machine learning help these robots deal with unexpected conditions that arise.

Similarities and Differences

Both IoT devices and robots depend on sensors to understand the environment around them, quickly process data and determine how to respond. Robots are able to handle anticipated situations, while most IoT applications can only handle well-defined tasks.

The main difference between the IoT and the robotics community is that robots take real action and are in the physical world. They do something. Focus has been shifting from the cyber component of IoT to the physical aspect, and that’s where the efforts are combining.

Why IoT and Robotics Tech Are Evolving Together

So far, the robotics and IoT communities have been driven by varying yet highly related objectives. IoT focuses on supporting services for pervasive sensing, monitoring and tracking, while the robotic communities focus on production action, interaction and autonomous behavior. A strong value would be added by combining the two and creating an Internet of Robotic Things.

The concept where sensor data coming from a range of sources are fused, processed with local and distributed intelligence and used to control and manipulate objects in the physical world is how the term “Internet of Robotic Things” was created. A wider situational awareness is given to robots from the IoT sensor and data analytics technologies, which leads to better task execution.

IoRT has three intelligent components:

1. First, the robot can sense that it has embedded monitoring capabilities and can get sensor data from other sources.
2. Second, it can analyze data from the event it monitors, which means there’s edge computing involved. Edge computing is where data is processed and analyzed locally instead of in the cloud, and it eliminates the need to transmit a wealth of data to the cloud.
3. Third, because of the first two components, the robot can determine which action to take and then take that action. As a result, the robot can control or manipulate a physical object, and if it was designed to, it can move in the physical world. The bigger idea for now is collaborations between machine / machine and between man / machine. These interactions could move toward predictive maintenance and entirely new services.