IoT in Transportation: Powering the Digital Technology

Posted by Sanjeev Verma on November 22nd, 2018

“IoT generates more data per second than a teenager does on Instagram” – says one of the founders from a recent startup.

The way we travel for work and leisure is undergoing through a period of real transformation. Mobility as a service and seamless customer service with digital innovation has shaken up the world. Businesses have adopted this disruptive technology on the ground level and companies like BMW has undoubtedly changed their B2B business at a very massive level.

Driver availability, road transportation, multimodal logistics, shipping, and road infrastructure have been common anomalies in the transportation industry. On the other hand, we have a generation of consumer who is very demanding like they want next day shipping, overnight shipping and many more. With time, expectations have increased rather than just swiping them off. And overall the industry was facing challenges over these but that is where IoT had a role to play.

Digital transformation is changing and reshaping the transportation industry. Not only this, Industrial Internet of Things, a breakthrough technology has taken the pace in the market and incorporated digital technology giant very efficiently. Cars are abruptly getting connected thus creating new opportunities for automotive manufacturers, ecosystem partners and other. Being a giant technology partner, one needs to bring together a globally scalable and secure cloud infrastructure, productivity tools, strong data analytics capabilities and an agile platform that provides total control and flexibility.  The digital transformation is redefining the true essence of transportation and thus changing the expectations of youth around. From the recent research, it was known that 90% of new cars will have connectivity capabilities by 2020. The connected cars have created an ecosystem where a path to higher quality products, more safety, more revenue opportunities, and other advance catalyst options have been re-enumerated. These connected cars are equipped with the latest technology hardware and software utilities which are connected to the cloud to get an insight into new and varied actionable data. Data from these sensors is of so much potential that it can transform the way how OEMs work, engineers plan and build, thus maintaining the product quality and safety. The connected car is the foundation for the newly emerging business models which is worth billion dollars. 

IoT in Transportation

How Digital Technology has been acting in a way that the emergence of the Internet of Things was not possible beforehand?

All the minute systems involved are critical mass systems. The more small devices are integrated the better your data source is and more precisely you can predict what you need to do. Also, one can predict the behavior of the driver with the latest emerging technology i.e. IoT. But what makes a major difference is that all this needs an entire ecosystem or platform to be built. The inbuilt HD Maps feature tells about the new route data, lane closure ahead and hence tells the recalculated route. Because the platform requires small devices, choosing the right technology partner becomes a major concern here. Evaluation of their strategies, market position and partner’s capabilities lands you to choose the right technology partner. The right technology partner supports unique objectives and will not limit your choices, thereby making an equal balance between the digital world and the technology giant IoT.

IoT in transportation has changed rapidly for ground transportation. From reactive to predictive maintenance, it has changed the complete scenario of the transportation industry. Predictive Maintenance analytics integrate the data from sensors to maximize the equipment life, parallely reducing the maintenance cost.

How IoT play a crucial role in the transportation industry?

IoT plays a crucial role because to access data you need to install hardware inside the car or any transportation medium. The data collected from the hardware goes to the cloud and the alert after data analysis goes to the control center. After which a decision has to be taken whether it is a stopping failure and has to stop the car or it can be updated later on when the car reaches to the destination or the alert is not a problem to continue.

Let’s see how IoT has brought over the commercial advantages around –

  • Energy consumption reduction has been one of the major commercial advantages of IoT in transportation. Identification of the driver behavior over the seamed route reduces the energy consumption by 5%.
  • Because of the presence of IoT in Transportation, availability of fleet has increased from 10% to complete 100%. Ground transportation is a spruling industry with a whole raft of regulations to comply with.
  • The energy consumption saves money too. Because technology has not been so much dependent on conventional machines, therefore, it reduces the cost of money. Not only this the real-time alerts and the quick decisions also help in saving the money.

Internet of Things, a leading innovative technology platform is built for integration which enables a broader ecosystem. With the help of IoT, capabilities like better collaboration and data sharing are increasingly integrated within the new business models that are being induced into the working strategy.

The implementation of IoT in transportation industry caters better control and operation, traffic planning, real-time alerts, secure and reliable communication. The global IoT in the transportation market was valued at 5.35 billion in 2016 and is expected to reach 8.76 billion by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 13.7% from 2017 to 2023. The major factors driving the market growth have decreased the cost of powerful sensors, enhanced internet penetration, extended connectivity and expenditure by governments in the several developed and the developing regions including North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

According to a global survey released by Gartner earlier this year, adoption of IoT is expected to reach 43 % of enterprises by the end of this year, with the heaviest users including companies in the transportation and Oil&Gas.

IoT, for example, promises to bring the changes to the transportation industry that we can’t even predict yet and is already influencing how carmakers build their vehicles and how they think of the future of their products.

Rapid changes in IoT technology make it challenging for even the most experienced experts to anticipate the future of standardization in the field. What is certain, however, is that the possibilities will be limitless.

“The convergence is inevitable,” says one of the famous industrialist of the transportation industry.  “IoT goes beyond connected devices, i.e. things with an IP address; all of the automatic identification technologies, including RFID and barcodes, enable IoT by helping to identify the ‘things’ in IoT so it’s all of this working together to enable IoT and its benefits.”

No matter what it is –a wearable tech or any household object, IoT will connect us in ways we cannot even imagine. So, if you are looking to expand your business and make the most out of IoT then grab the tails of the emerging IoT wave and adopt the one-stop solution in your working strategy.

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Sanjeev Verma

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Sanjeev Verma
Joined: October 29th, 2018
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