ldings, and radioactivity sensors for safety and health applications.
- Thermal sensors. For example, room temperature monitoring in smart buildings, environmental monitoring or material temperature monitoring in industrial process management.
- Vibration and sound sensors. For example, seismic sensors for regional safety; sound pressure for health monitoring and industrial process automation; specific sound monitoring for civil management applications, such as gunshot noise detection; personal health applications, such as fitness and health wearables; or vibration sensors for reliability-based maintenance of equipment in plants or for industrial organizations.
- Matter and materials sensors. Many applications for environmental, safety, health, agricultural and environmental automation require specific fluid and gas sensors, such as those to detect a chemical presence or oxygen, carbon dioxide, humidity or water levels.
- Time and space sensors. For example, Geographic Information System location sensors for logistics management; personal applications; or location, velocity and acceleration sensors for vehicle and traffic management.
IoT sensor use cases
Smart sensors serve three broad purposes. First, they provide greater visibility into existing processes and workflows, identifying items, locating them and determining their environmental conditions. For example, smart sensors in industrial IoT environments can keep track of temperature and humidity, can log data for historical records and quality management, or can be used as triggers for alarms or process management in plants or warehouses.
Second, IoT sensors can be embedded into products to improve processes or the products themselves. In the manufacturing process, sensors can monitor, control and improve operations or be added to logistics to streamline how products are delivered. When embedded in devices, smart products can create new revenue possibilities.
Third, the lower cost and more advanced capabilities of sensors enable wider and more effective use cases. The cost of physical sensors and RFID tags has dropped considerably, as have the costs of smart sensor software applications, connectivity options and deployments.
Smart sensor benefits
The three use cases of IoT sensors outlined above lead to three categories of benefits, said Paul Miller, a senior analyst at Forrester Research.
First, the increased visibility IoT sensors provide into existing workflows and processes enable companies to see where things are thanks to real-time data. For example, logistics companies can outfit their fleet of vehicles with sensors to detect the location of each truck.
As companies begin to mine data from those sensors, Miller said, the second benefit emerges: predicting what comes next. In the same logistics example, collecting real-time data about where a fleet has been and how long trucks take to complete their routes can enable the company to predict when drivers will deliver packages. Smart sensors in logistics can also gather information about a driver's driving style and the size and weight of packages, as well as external data, such as traffic or weather conditions that may affect delivery.
"Now you build a rich and, hopefully, accurate model that can be used to improve communication with customers, optimize loading and routing, or reduce costs and emissions," Miller said.
In another example, smart sensors in manufacturing can collect historical machine data that companies can use to build models to predict when machine components are likely to fail.
"Instead of facing the potentially huge cost of unplanned downtime for a production line or factory, suspect components can be proactively replaced during scheduled periods of time," Miller said.
The third benefit of smart sensors relates to revenue generation; IoT creates a number of new business models. With data about how a machine operates, how it is used and how it wears out, manufacturers can offer outcome-based services to customers, Miller said. Manufacturers can now include consumables, servicing and even replac