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From the Internet of Computers
to the Internet of Things
Friedemann Mattern and Christian Floerkemeier
Distributed Systems Group, Institute for Pervasive Computing, ETH Zurich
{mattern,floerkem}@inf.ethz.ch
Abstract. This paper
1
discusses the vision, the challenges, possible usage sce-
narios and technological building blocks of the “Internet of Things”. In particu-
lar, we consider RFID and other important technological developments such as
IP stacks and web servers for smart everyday objects. The paper concludes with
a discussion of social and governance issues that are likely to arise as the vision
of the Internet of Things becomes a reality.
Keywords: Internet of Things, RFID, smart objects, wireless sensor networks.
In a few decades time, computers will be inter-
woven into almost every industrial product.
Karl Steinbuch, German computer science pioneer, 1966
1 The vision
The Internet of Things represents a vision in which the Internet extends into the real
world embracing everyday objects. Physical items are no longer disconnected from
the virtual world, but can be controlled remotely and can act as physical access points
to Internet services. An Internet of Things makes computing truly ubiquitous – a
concept initially put forward by Mark Weiser in the early 1990s [29]. This develop-
ment is opening up huge opportunities for both the economy and individuals.
However, it also involves risks and undoubtedly represents an immense technical and
social challenge.
The Internet of Things vision is grounded in the belief that the steady advances in
microelectronics, communications and information technology we have witnessed in
recent years will continue into the foreseeable future. In fact – due to their diminish-
ing size, constantly falling price and declining energy consumption – processors,
communications modules and other electronic components are being increasingly
integrated into everyday objects today.
“Smart” objects play a key role in the Internet of Things vision, since embedded
communication and information technology would have the potential to revolutionize
1
This paper is an updated translation of [19].
the utility of these objects. Using sensors, they are able to perceive their context, and
via built-in networking capabilities they would be able to communicate with each
other, access Internet services and interact with people. “Digitally upgrading” conven-
tional object in this way enhances their physical function by adding the capabilities of
digital objects, thus generating substantial added value. Forerunners of this develop-
ment are already apparent today – more and more devices such as sewing machines,
exercise bikes, electric toothbrushes, washing machines, electricity meters and photo-
copiers are being “computerized” and equipped with network interfaces.
In other application domains, Internet connectivity of everyday objects can be used to
remotely determine their state so that information systems can collect up-to-date infor-
mation on physical objects and processes. This enables many aspects of the real world
to be “observed” at a previously unattained level of detail and at negligible cost. This
would not only allow for a better understanding of the underlying processes, but also
for more efficient control and management [7]. The ability to react to events in the
physical world in an automatic, rapid and informed manner not only opens up new
opportunities for dealing with complex or critical situations, but also enables a wide
variety of business processes to be optimized. The real-time interpretation of data
from the physical world will most likely lead to the introduction of various novel
business services and may deliver substantial economic and social benefits.
The use of the word “Internet” in the catchy term “Internet of Things” which stands
for the vision outlined above can be seen as either simply a metaphor – in the same
way that people use the Web today, things will soon also communicate with each
other, use services, provide data and thus generate added value – or it can be inter-
preted in a stricter technical sense, postulating that an IP protocol stack will be used
by smart things (or at least by the “proxies”, their representatives on the network).
The term “Internet of Things” was popularized by the work of the Auto-ID Center
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which in 1999 started to design
and propagate a cross-company RFID infrastructure.
2
In 2002, its co-founder and
former head Kevin Ashton was quoted in Forbes Magazine as saying, “We need an
internet for things, a standardized way for computers to understand the real world”
[23]. This article was entitled “The Internet of Things”, and was the first documented
use of the term in a literal sense
3
. However, already in 1999 essentially the same
notion was used by Neil Gershenfeld from the MIT Media Lab in his popular book
“When Things Start to Think” [11] when he wrote “in retrospect it looks like the rapid
growth of the World Wide Web may have been just the trigger charge that is now
setting off the real explosion, as things start to use the Net.”
In recent years, the term “Internet of Things” has spread rapidly – in 2005 it could
already be found in book titles [6, 15], and in 2008 the first scientific conference was
held in this research area [9]. European politicians initially only used the term in the
context of RFID technology, but the titles of the RFID conferences “From RFID to
the Internet of Things” (2006) and “RFID: Towards the Internet of Things” (2007)
held by the EU Commission already allude to a broader interpretation. Finally, in
2
The Auto-ID Center’s first white paper [22] already suggested a vision that extended beyond
RFID: “The Center is creating the infrastructure […] for a networked physical world. […] A
well known parallel to our networked physical world vision is the Internet.”
3
Kevin Ashton commented in June 2009: “I’m fairly sure the phrase Internet of Things started
life as the title of a presentation I made at Procter & Gamble in 1999” [2].
2009, a dedicated EU Commission action plan ultimately saw the Internet of Things
as a general evolution of the Internet “from a network of interconnected computers to
a network of interconnected objects” [5].
2 Basics
From a technical point of view, the Internet of Things is not the result of a single
novel technology; instead, several complementary technical developments provide
capabilities that taken together help to bridge the gap between the virtual and physical
world. These capabilities include:
− Communication and cooperation: Objects have the ability to network with
Internet resources or even with each other, to make use of data and services
and update their state. Wireless technologies such as GSM and UMTS, Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth, ZigBee and various other wireless networking standards currently
under development, particularly those relating to Wireless Personal Area
Networks (WPANs), are of primary relevance here.
− Addressability: Within an Internet of Things, objects can be located and
addressed via discovery, look-up or name services, and hence remotely inter-
rogated or configured.
− Identification: Objects are uniquely identifiable. RFID, NFC (Near Field Com-
munication) and optically readable bar codes are examples of technologies with
which even passive objects which do not have built-in energy resources can be
identified (with the aid of a “mediator” such as an RFID reader or mobile
phone). Identification enables objects to be linked to information associated
with the particular object and that can be retrieved from a server, provided the
mediator is connected to the network (see Figure 1).
− Sensing: Objects collect information about their surroundings with sensors,
record it, forward it or react directly to it.
− Actuation: Objects contain actuators to manipulate their environment (for
example by converting electrical signals into mechanical movement). Such
actuators can be used to remotely control real-world processes via the Internet.
− Embedded information processing: Smart objects feature a processor or micro-
controller, plus storage capacity. These resources can be used, for example, to
process and interpret sensor information, or to give products a “memory” of
how they have been used.
− Localization: Smart things are aware of their physical location, or can be lo-
cated. GPS or the mobile phone network are suitable technologies to achieve
this, as well as ultrasound time measurements, UWB (Ultra-Wide Band), radio
beacons (e.g. neighboring WLAN base stations or RFID readers with known
coordinates) and optical technologies.
− User interfaces: Smart objects can communicate with people in an appropriate
manner (either directly or indirectly, for example via a smartphone). Innovative
interaction paradigms are relevant here, such as tangible user interfaces, flexi-
ble polymer-based displays and voice, image or gesture recognition methods.
Most specific applications only need a subset of these capabilities, particularly
since implementing all of them is often expensive and requires significant technical
effort. Logistics applications, for example, are currently concentrating on the approx-
imate localization (i.e. the position of the last read point) and relatively low-cost iden-
tification of objects using RFID or bar codes. Sensor data (e.g. to monitor cool chains)
or embedded processors are limited to those logistics applications where such infor-
mation is essential such as the temperature-controlled transport of vaccines.
Forerunners of communicating everyday objects are already apparent, particularly
in connection with RFID – for example the short-range communication of key cards
with the doors of hotel rooms, or ski passes that talk to lift turnstiles. More futuristic
scenarios include a smart playing card table, where the course of play is monitored
using RFID-equipped playing cards [8]. However, all of these applications still in-
volve dedicated systems in a local deployment; we are not talking about an “Internet”
in the sense of an open, scalable and standardized system.
Figure 1. The smartphone as a mediator between people, things and the Internet.
But these days wireless communications modules are becoming smaller and cheap-
er, IPv6 is increasingly being used, the capacity of flash memory chips is growing, the
per-instruction energy requirements of processors continues to fall and mobile phones
have built-in bar code recognition, NFC and touch screens – and can take on the role
of intermediaries between people, everyday items and the Internet (see Figure 1). All
this contributes to the evolution of the Internet of Things paradigm: From the remote
identification of objects and an Internet “with” things, we are moving towards a sys-
tem where (more or less) smart objects actually communicate with users, Internet
services and even among each other. These new capabilities that things offer opens up
fascinating prospects and interesting application possibilities; but they are also ac-
companied by substantial requirements relating to the underlying technology and
infrastructure. In fact, the infrastructure for an Internet of Things must not only be
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