The Internet of Things is getting Hot!

Literally - New Scientist:

Fifteen spiderbots, so-named because of the three spindly arms protruding from their suitcase-sized steel bodies, were lowered from a helicopter to spots inside the crater and around the rim of Mount St Helens, an active volcano in the US state of Washington, in July.

Each has a seismometer for detecting earthquakes, an infrared sensor to detect heat from volcanic explosions, a sensor to detect ash clouds, and a global positioning system to sense the ground bulging and pinpoint the exact location of seismic activity.

Once in place, the bots reached out to each other to form what is known as a mesh network. "It's similar to the internet," says Steve Chien, the principal scientist for autonomous systems at JPL. "You just lay them out, and they figure out the best way to route the data."

Its the economics that is driving the Internet of Things, of course:

The spiderbots are flexible and inexpensive enough that they can be set down almost anywhere. "You can imagine just dropping these out of a helicopter, and they'll just land like spikes in the ground and do their thing," Chien says.

The spider web's unique networking capabilities also give it a distinct advantage over other monitoring systems. The network is self-healing – if one node dies, the others automatically route data around it.

The Internet of Things is coming, in fact robots and such devices may even get their own operating system (oh no, just what we need - splitting a nascent market into multiple competing opertaing systems...). But things are definitely on the move, a recent McKinsey paper talks of the two big innovation "Nexii" transforming the Net over the next few years. One is "The Internet of People" - aka the Social Net. The other...:

The second innovation nexus is what we call the “Internet of Things,” which arises from the tiny sensors, computers, and other microdevices that can be built into physical objects and connected through wireless networks. The results are objects that become “smarter” and more interactive, with the potential to transform traditional business models. Goods and services that self-monitor can be sold in much finer slices and much more efficiently. Rather than buy a product outright, or sign a long-term service contract, sensors can track actual usage, enabling customers to pay only for what they consume or even the value they receive. In some cases, what was once a weighty capital expenditure is transformed into a lighter-weight operating expense, when products are transformed into services.

The new logic of paying for value is creating an array of novel business models. Take aircraft engines, where manufacturers are selling “thrust” as a service—rather than engines as a product—since they now are able to track the usage and performance of their engines electronically. At the same time, airplane manufacturers are offering contracts that guarantee “uptime” of their products, using embedded sensors in airframes that are able to determine when preventative maintenance is needed.

While you can see where they are going with all this, these models may be as fanciful as those of the "Social Net" have turned out to be so far. "Thrust as a Service" is just another term for "Servicing Engines as a Service", and any aero engineer worth their salt will want the frigging engines to work properly - but in Management NewSpeak, there is one born every minute, as PT Barnum once said.