Are We Really Equipped for Industry 4.0?

Are We Really Equipped for Industry 4.0? By Mark Patrick, Mouser Electronics

The fourth industrial revolution (or Industry 4.0), is now upon us — made possible by the Internet, cloud computing, data analytics and the roll-out of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) infrastructure. Although prior industrial technology deployments had enabled the monitoring and control of various systems in factories, power plants, oil refineries, gas pipelines, rail transportation and suchlike, IIoT has the potential to bringing about the next phase in the progression of automation, through employing industrial wireless sensor networks (WSNs).

Recent Internet of Things (IoT) security breaches have taught us that embedded systems are sought-after targets for attackers. To address the threats, engineers must rely on more than just software-based solutions. They need to consider security at the microcontroller level.

Image and video processing requirements present several network resource-related challenges for IoT developers. Even low-resolution video and compressed image data can burden a network. Fortunately, new small-footprint embedded vision solutions offer engineers opportunities to develop powerful yet resource-light IoT applications that were unthinkable just a few years ago.

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) promises to support a new era of smart industry. Founded on the notions of openness and interoperability, easy scalability and ‘Big Data’, it can help enterprises drive significant operational improvements across their various manufacturing and business processes.

Creativity has a new champion; open source. Access to ‘free’ software, along with low cost hardware is enabling anyone to realise things that they could have only previously dreamt of and this has the potential to help change society for the better. The realm of open source can be both inviting and confusing; inviting because it really is as good as it sounds and confusing because, well if something sounds too good to be true, then it normally is, right?