Internet of Things: Use Cases
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Internet of Things: Use Cases

In this video blog post Tony Pereira explains the use cases of the internet of things and how Mitel uses IoT technology to power the future. This is part 2 of our IoT video series with Tony Pereira. In part 1 of the series, Internet of Things: Giving Machines a Voice, we explored using smart sensors and how Mitel can work with partners involved in the IoT space.

Those partners who manage buildings, airports and smart cities can use Mitel to connect the platforms through APIs and workflows, enabling people to engage with machines.

Giving machines a voice starts with these connections, but how does that apply to your business? Tony Pereira explains below:

From the Video

Let me give you a couple of, three examples. So example number one, let's take the airport environment. Are you all familiar with these luggage trolleys? Where they put the luggage and then drive it around to the plane. And very often these luggage trolleys get lost, maybe the plane doesn't find the luggage trolley in time so the plane gets delayed. Imagine a world, and this is actually real life, because one of our major partners is doing this. That actually have IoT geolocating sensors on those trolleys, those locating sensors basically track and send messages exactly where they are.

Geo alerts inform human operators

If they go beyond a certain fence, a geofence, it sends an alert. So you could say, okay, Trolley A, you're destined to go to American Airlines flight number two. And this is the geofence boundary you should go into. So when that trolley, for some reason, deviates, maybe somebody picked up the wrong trolley and they drive it off to Qantas five, the wrong flight. Sensor can be a learner, operations can say that's the wrong trolley going to the wrong aircraft and take corrective action. 

And again here's an example where the sensor noticed that it's not within it's geo boundary, it's left its geo fence, it sends an alert. The operator and the command control center sees that and immediately gets alerted with a notification. Can then activate a call to a field rep, that can say, hey, you know what? That trolley should really be going this way, not that way. It probably save a lot of money, because remember, when the airlines are delayed, when the airlines don't take off on time, customers get upset, costs airlines a lot of money, increases ticket prices.

Saving time and money with automation

So doing this kind of technology actually saves everybody a lot of time, money and frustration. Yeah, let me take another example. So this one could be where we have a building and the building is obviously there is all kinds of activity happening. People moving in and out HVAC systems turning on and off. And maybe there's a situation where there's a water leak. Plumbing pipes burst in the basement. So you can have water sensors in areas where there's a probability of water seepage or water leakage. Again, straightaway the sensor can detect that, flag an alert, initiate a call to a service technician. And the service technician can turn up on site, find out what's happening, and fix it. Or turn on a video surveillance camera and investigate what's happening. And maybe it's some, maybe it's happening on the roof, they can send a drone up there. To go and investigate, hey what happened to my HVAC system on the roof?

So when we get into cities, we're building like high-rise buildings, or buildings where very difficult to put permanent people, accessible all the time, using IoT technology, coupling it with human interaction, coupling with automation with other devices like cameras. It just makes the whole way of magic in that environment much more efficient. Again, it delivers a safe stable environment for building officers, building managers, and employed people working in those buildings.

Helping people in healthcare

Take healthcare, the healthcare industry, where maybe this is the case where you've got maybe an elderly home where patients go wandering because of Alzheimer's, and this is a real problem. It's one of those things that happens in real life where you have an elderly patient somehow strolls out of the building, gets lost, you get all kinds of alerts, the police get involved trying to find them.

We can avoid that if we maybe, an elderly person give them a docket, a little sensor that has a geo spatial location device. Again, we can put a geo fence around that building. So that elderly person goes to the garden, that's okay. That's fine, that's still safe. If they leave that boundary of that environment and they go to the street, then the alert gets triggered. And then that can call the nurse, call the local person in the building that's I mean it's all looking for him. Joel was leaving the building, quick, go find him. So then you can avoid the police, avoid the alerts, avoid all the hassle of trying to find this poor old person that's wandering around lost.That's a human element, this is how you know, IoT technology can actually help improve the quality of life in that elderly management environment.

IoT is not about machines taking over. It's not like the Terminator, right? They actually have a role in life to help us work better and live better, and you know be more efficient in what we do.

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