Evening Lecture series kicks off 2024 highlighting power of Internet of Things

You used the Internet of Things (IoT) today even if you didn’t realize it.

The GPS mapping tools that guided your commute, the traffic cameras that alerted you to a traffic delay or nabbed a red-light-runner, the smart-home devices that locked your front door, turned off the lights, and told you the weather — all are part of the IoT.

It’s likely that any errand you ran this week used these networked sensors to communicate and share data as part of a wide array of everyday things that exchange information, sense the environment, and act upon the environment.

The data gathered and analyzed by IoT has a range of applications for both military and civilian life, and IHMC’s Associate Director Dr. Niranjan Suri is among the leaders researching how this data trove could be leveraged. He kicks off the 2024 IHMC Evening Lecture Series with a talk highlighting this research area on Jan. 18. Reserve your seat here.

Throughout his career, Suri’s research has focused on networking, communications, distributed systems, information management, interoperability, Internet of Things (IoT), and the application of machine learning to all of those domains.

“They can essentially create a smarter thing, a smarter home, a smarter military — even a smarter city,” Suri said.

For several years, Suri and his team have investigated the ways the military community could utilize this publicly available, free data from the civilian IoT. Suri and his team also have considered how the military version of the IoT— the Internet of Military Things (IoMT) — could be maximized to improve logistics and protect the safety of our nation’s warfighters.

Public data treasure chest

Civilian IoT is a rich source of data with wide applications, some currently in use, some still in the idea phase:

— Cities increasingly are offering services that can tell you things like where you can park your car, when the next public bus, train, or subway is coming, or if there are delays and suggest alternate routes.

— Cities are using IoT sensors to create a real-time picture of the environment by tracking air quality, temperature, noise pollution, and ultraviolet radiation.

— Electrical grids can use IoT to monitor power consumption, balance uploads, and anticipate where there might be problems upcoming.

— Connected cars could use IoT so that the car in front of you talks to the car behind you about roadway conditions, so maybe your car can avoid the bump or the road hazard that the car in front of you went over.

“Sometimes it is behind the scenes. Sometimes you actually interact with it,” Suri said.

Networked sensors are part of a wide array of everyday things that exchange information, sense the environment, and act upon the environment. The data gathered and analyzed by the IOT has a range of applications for both military and civilian life.

“They can essentially create a smarter thing, a smarter home, a smarter military, even a smarter city,” Suri said.

For several years, Suri and his team have investigated the ways that the military community could tap into this trove of civilian data, much of which is free, and publicly available. Suri and his team also have considered how the military version of the IOT — the Internet of Military Things (IOMT) — could be maximized to improve logistics and protect the safety of our nation’s warfighters.

Military applications of IOT

Suri also has worked for several years on projects with IOT for military applications.

Beginning in 2014, Suri co-chaired a North Atltantic Treaty Organization (NATO) coalition of subject matter experts and thought leaders looking at all the military domains — logistics, automatic monitoring of equipment, health and wellness of soldiers, information gathering and sensing of the environment of cities — with an eye toward how to make civilian IoT data available to warfighters conducting humanitarian or military missions.

One exercise leveraged a real-world smart city’s IoT infrastructure to model a scenario in which the military has been called in to aid in disaster recovery.

Another exercise tackled finding the quickest route from an embassy to a train station with an injured person using IoT infused with edge computing to process video feeds to distinguish between military and civilian vehicles, people, and other hazards along the route.

“All of this information can come very quickly and helps you improve your situation awareness,” Suri said. “One of the major thrusts of our goal is to improve the situation awareness of these operators.”

The Internet of Battlefield Things

IHMC also supports a program with the U.S. Army that for the last six years has funded basic research into understanding how the Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) can be maximized to manage resources and keep servicemembers out of harm’s way.

One COVID-19-era innovation from this program — the Distributed Virtual Proving Ground — is having impact well beyond its origins as a workaround to travel restrictions in the pandemic era.

What was once limited to an annual in-person gathering of experts to test new ideas is now, with IHMC as a hub, a virtual testing network that supports distributed experimentation year-round, Suri said.

“Now we experiment year-round, just continuously doing this kind of testing and evaluation,” he said. “It has improved outcomes in every way imaginable.”

Daniel Duran is a Senior Research Associate who began his IHMC career as an intern in 2011. His past work has included developing computer vision algorithms to autonomously detect from high altitudes downed human pilots in the Australian Outback. He also designed and built a GPS-guided system used to deliver an emergency response payload to the pilots autonomously.

About a year and a half ago, he and the IHMC team began work on a threat detection system that could provide a lower-cost initial line of defense for critical infrastructure as well as for military personnel.

These networked sensors have five to 10 different sensing modalities, including tracking light, temperature, motion, even the ability to track chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) exposures.

“You can imagine how you might these around critical infrastructure like a military base or power plants or an airport, so that you can very quickly assess a situation,” Duran said.

This entirely autonomous system feeds data to the command center and to a warfighter in the field.

“So you can have a first-responder like a police officer, firefighter, or a warfighter simply attaching this to (their person) and they’re good to go,” Duran said. “And you can monitor their health and the threats around them very carefully from different distances.”

The wearable version of the device has additional applications in the field that are still being explored, Duran said. It is an innovation that could save time, money, and potentially lives.

Existing sensor technology in use is complicated and expensive — anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000 per sensor. These devices can sense anywhere from five to 10 different modalities in a single sensor for less than $100 each.

“The whole point of this technology is to complement already existing technologies,” Duran said. “We want not just to develop the framework itself, but also to miniaturize and develop the sensor technology to make it cheaper and more effective for usage on the field.”

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry, and academia to conduct ground-breaking science and develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.