The IoT hangs on speed to such a degree that “real time” has become such a buzzword that it’s almost becoming meaningless. One arena where immediacy is both realistic and currently being exercised is WebRTC, and IoT can tap into that.
At last week’s IoT Evolution Expo at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, a panel of speaker in the Connected Home track covered the implications and relationships inherent in the developing IoT industry, including how real time communications can be complimentary to intelligent machines in the IoT.
The epicenter of his discussion was at the “IOT and WebRTC Machines Talk in Real Time” session, featuring Peter Dunkley, Technical Director at Acision, Vladimir Beloborodov, Unified Communications CTO at MERA Software Services, Alexey Goloshubin, CEO / CTO at Bit6, and Jessica Groopman, Industry Analyst at the Altimeter Group.
They explored the fact that in the IoT, the transfer of information between decision makers often requires real time discussions and how WebRTC can be an enabling technology for companies that need to marry IoT-derived intelligence with media resources and internal and external stakeholders.
Dunkley talked attendees through a case study about how Acision took the BioScanr platform, a constantly connected vital signs monitor, and integrated it into an app that triggered a video call between patients and doctors when the vital signs fell off of certain benchmarks. This system was enacted for patients after surgeries or when they were sent home from hospitals, but monitoring was still needed. The crux was that the information from the monitor wasn’t useful to the doctor by itself, until a line of communication with the patient could be established. By marrying the WebRTC and IoT solutions, patient health was improved in a measurable way.
Beloborodov talked about how critical it is for real-time processes in the IoT to have a real-time communications component so that decisions could be made to address potential problems as indicated by sensor networks, before emergencies erupted.
“WebRTC can offer IoT data enriched with audio and video,” he said. “That way, all media and data can be combined on one port – a secure P2P data channel, in browser.”
Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Edited by
Ken Briodagh