RealDolmen : Free yourself from decision making

Need for semantics

Many companies start using IoT to obtain more information from the physical world that can be used to make processes quicker and more streamlined. However, collecting data is only useful if the data can be given meaning. Computers read numbers indiscriminately. Only when meaning is linked to each value, does the computer really know what it's looking at. For example, a computer needs to know that the data it has relates to body temperature rather than room temperature in order to determine the correct action required. A room temperature of 21° is perfectly normal, but if a body temperature reading is this low, urgent action must be taken.

Semantic annotation in the IoT domain supplies computers with metadata that can be machine interpreted and used to describe IoT devices and data. This enables you to ask the system to derive information from the data you are measuring. Once you have this data, the application can provide you with information that was not measured but rather extrapolated from other measurements.

The power of artificial intelligence

Derived data is obtained by combining measured data with business logic. You can use it to initiate actions. If you link business rules to certain information, you can program an automatic action that can be initiated once the data has been obtained. For instance, the number of people in a space, the room temperature and the air quality could prompt an air purification system to automatically switch on, if certain values are exceeded.

Since artificial intelligence enables us to recognize patterns, you can even take it a step further. You could also program a system to make certain decisions within a process based on specific information. When the same sort of information is recorded elsewhere, a similar action will be triggered. In this case, you're not waiting for values to be exceeded, as the system already knows that when a certain number of people enter, the air purification should be turned on as a preventative measure. The system recognizes the situation and reacts without the need for human intervention.

This awareness and knowledge of the situation makes the communication between individual machines, and between machines and humans a lot smoother. When someone is in a known situation, only data that is relevant to that situation is displayed. Imagine there is an inspector who needs to inspect an electrical cabinet. In this case, he would only be shown the information that he is interested in and that requires his attention. Instead of presenting information about all of the components, you could choose to only display information that relates to components that show abnormalities and therefore require maintenance. In addition to displaying information based on the situation, services can also become situation-aware. An application that can start up a machine could, whenever a person is standing next to it, offer them the option to start it using the application. However, if the user is located remotely, the application could only provide access to monitoring functionality, to guarantee the safety of the people in the vicinity of the machine.

Are there any decisions that can be taken off your hands?

If you make a business process aware of the situation in which it is operating, you can save time and improve efficiency by allowing decisions to be made automatically, or by extending and improving the user's ability to make decisions.

Learn more about the many opportunities of the Internet of Things or contact our specialists: