The IoT Solutions World Congress was held in Barcelona October 3-5. As part of the event, a competition was held among IoT testbeds, 11 of which were selected as finalists by the program committee. Here’s a rundown of those top 11, which presented the most impactful IoT solutions designed to show real industrial IoT in action.
Chain of Custody Management Solution for Cold Chain Logistics: Connected Transport
HCL Technologies presented an IoT + Blockchain enabled intelligent cold chain logistics solution that brings transparency in a supply chain transaction across all stakeholders. It builds a network of trust and end-to-end visibility, providing reliable information on provenance and chain of custody of goods under shipment. The solution enables transactions that are safer, cheaper, and faster. In general, this sounded as though it is a system to track packages with real-time data to the location and possession of the package.
Cloud-Connected Switch: Manufacturing
Smart irrigation ramp control and smart river pollution prevention applications were demonstrated at the show. Schneider Electric provides the connected devices, connectivity to the network, management of the data, and services for customers. This testbed collaborated with Sigfox, a partner, who provides an operated network for connected devices. This large setup essentially comes down to the small blue valve connected to the faucet. There are future applications for this device but for now it gives simple on/off data through a Sigfox network.
Connected Workforce Safety and Operations: Manufacturing
The testbed demonstrates how industrial IoT technologies can be employed to improve worker safety and well-being, while facilitating safety compliance and enabling safe work operations. The testbed solution accomplishes this by employing smart wearables and infrastructure, cognitive learning abilities, and 24/7 edge connectivity with operations command centers and emergency response teams. This involves multiple connected devices in a system to know where employees are at all times, and if there are any dangers in their area.
Connecting Overseas: Connected Transport
The “connecting overseas” demo is a project currently in the market. Vodafone together with Hiruteknova, TST, and Rodman will show a real connected boat powered by NB-IoT. The solution provides real-time information about the battery, water leaks, danger of sinking, temperature, if there is someone on the boat among, and more.
everis Drizzle-Digital Maintenance: Manufacturing
everis Drizzle is an EAM (Enterprise Asset Management) everything to everything (E2E) platform for drone management over SAP’s network that allows the import, storage, and analysis of plant information captured via IoT services. It reduces time to market to implement digital use cases around Industry 4.0, provides a scalable solution based on big data, real-time, analytics, IoT, SAP integration, and user experience and mobile. This drone is able to be used in a host of ways. Everis was even able to develop facial recognition so when everything isn’t connected, a drone may be able to fly over a site and quickly gather data without a large infrastructure.
Flowserve Pump Demonstrator-An Industrial IoT Technology-based Solution: Manufacturing
Flowserve Pump Demo highlights a compelling use case—predictive maintenance to reduce unplanned downtime in critical assets. With IoT analytics and machine learning, manufacturers can know when and how an asset is going to fail. This knowledge gives them the ability to take preventative measures to avoid downtime. The demo also shows how augmented reality (AR) is transforming the way products can be serviced. With a phone, tablet, or other device, a worker can use the camera to scan over a setup. The software will recognize the parts and project them over the real image that shows on a monitor. From here workers can select different options. For example, if the bearings need to be changed, a worker can locate the area of the bearings with a camera and monitor. Once located, the worker can play an AR video that will walk him/her through the process of replacing the bearing.
Huawei Elevators Connection Solution: Manufacturing
Huawei Edge Computing IoT (EC-IoT) Solution collaborated with GE’s Industrial Internet cloud platform Predix to develop predictive maintenance for connected elevators. This test bed helps Schindler Group to fulfill automated elevator operations and management, lower elevator operating and maintenance costs, and increase the uptime of elevators.
Phygital Demo of Hacker Attack on Digital Substation: Energy
Kaspersky Lab’s testbed was created specifically to raise awareness about vulnerabilities of modern digital substations. It demonstrates several scenarios of network attacks on the connected equipment of digital substation and possible countermeasures to detect and prevent these attacks. The testbed uses technologies of augmented reality that lead to a highly interactive display that was fun and educational to use.
Save the Peaches: Open Industry–Agriculture
The goal of SaveThePeaches is to dramatically increase the predictability of frost events in peach orchards by using dense monitoring that takes advantage of low-power wireless mesh networking technology. The solution is currently being tested in Mendoza, Argentina, with 100 sensors deployed in a real orchard testbed.
Submersible Transformer Inspection Robot: Energy
Showcasing the world’s first submersible transformer inspection robot, ABB is changing the rules for internal transformer health inspections. Its new state-of-the-art robot uses data analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) via ABB Ability platform. An oil-filled tank with a real transformer section demonstrates the robot in action. In addition, visitors were able to pilot the robot with an X Box controller, and a virtual reality headset.
And the winner for Most Impactful Testbed is…
Time-Sensitive Networks for Flexible Manufacturing: Manufacturing
Displaying the value and readiness of Time-Sensitive Networks (new IEEE standards) supporting real-time control and synchronization, Cisco combined 17 companies’ technologies in one testbed. The vision was to enable flexible manufacturing for Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0 through deployment of open standard deterministic networks in production facilities.
The test beds only represented 500 m2 of a massive show. I look forward to seeing what the IoT Solutions World Congress has to present next year as this young influential show is growing year on year. The show brought in a lot of attention and some big names. The judges for the testbed competition were:
- Jonathan Ballon, Vice President of Intel
- Akash Bhatia, Principal BCG, the Boston Consulting Group
- Mark Crawford, Open Standards Strategist at SAP Strategic IP Initiatives
- Eric Harper, Sr. Software Architect at ABB
- Tony Milne, Business Development Manager at Advantech
- Derek O’Halloran, Head of the Future of Digital Economy and Society at the World Economic Forum
- Shyam Nath, Director of Technology Integrations (IoT/industrial internet) at General Electric
- Calvin Smith, Director & Head of IoT Partner Engineering at Wipro Digital
- Richard Soley, Executive Director of the Industrial Internet Consortium