Internet of Things preparatory studies competition opens 11th October
There's less than a month to go before the first phase of the Technology Strategy Board's Internet of Things competition opens. The TSB is investing £500,000 in preparatory studies to develop strategies for moving towards a converged and open application and services marketplace in the Internet of Things. The competition opens on 11th October, and the deadline for receipt of applications is 16th November. Following the preparatory studies, the TSB will invest up to £4m in a competition for a demonstrator in 2012. See the TSB website for more details and a downloadable brief.
You can also keep up-to-date on news and events (including a briefing day in Edinburgh on 4th October), by joining the Internet of Things group on _connect.
‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) describes the trend for environments, buildings, vehicles, clothing, portable devices and other objects to have more and more information associated with them and/or the ability to sense, communicate, network and produce new information. Various other terms have been used with the broadly similar meaning in other contexts, such as Pervasive Internet, Connected Environments, Smart Places, Smart Cities, Connected Cars, Ubiquitous Computing, Everyware, Connected World, Physical Internet, Smart Homes, Smart Meters, Wireless Sensor Networks, Ambient Intelligence, M2M, Web of Things, etc.
Extensive consultation with UK industry and academia shows that the full economic potential of the Internet of Things is held back by systemic issues such as fragmentation and barriers to application and service development at scale. The challenge is the formation of an open application and services ecosystem of the Internet of Things, unlocking new markets in services and helping the UK to gain a competitive advantage in Internet of Things technology, services and adoption.
A more converged scenario where there is increased, easier and harmonised access to data about ‘things’ within and across domains would cause a step change in the rate of innovation and create a marketplace for applications and services.
To that end, the Technology Strategy Board has launched a competition for preparatory studies to explore, from a technological, business and user perspective a number of Internet of Things converged scenarios in various sectors, and to develop strategies and plans to get there. The competition will open on October 11th 2011 and the studies will be followed by a further investment of up to £4m into a convergence demonstrator in 2012.
The official Technology Strategy Board page on the competition can be found here:
http://www.innovateuk.org/content/competition/internet-of-things-convergence-.ashx