If there were a ‘winner’ in the smart cities race right now, it unfortunately wouldn’t be the UK. The UK is currently much further behind other cities that have already implemented lots of IoT technologies. An example of this can be seen with Spain’s smart bins, these are bins that have small sensors inside them which allow bin lorries to be able to determine which bins are full, and therefore plan the most effective route for bin collections.

Having such an ecosystem in place, saves the city time and money and increases productivity, whilst reducing mess and making for a much nicer and cleaner environment. However, intelligent waste monitoring is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how late the UK is with implementing IoT infrastructures.


Other New and Exciting IoT Tech

Other types of new and exciting IoT technologies include sensors placed under desks which allow desk space usage to be recorded. Desk spaces can cost companies thousands of pounds a year, so to be able to determine whether more desks are needed or not, and to act accordingly is an example of cost-effective tech introduced by office management companies where people can introduce their own IoT solutions within their businesses.

Smart rings are another addition to the world of IoT and the shift to wearable IoT. Smart rings allow people to make payments with the tap of their ring that they are already wearing, eliminating the need to carry around cards and fiddle around trying to find your phone at the bottom of your bag!


Restrictions on IoT

As well as the obvious restrictions of the government and costs, for such systems to exist, multiple organisations and businesses working in unity is essential, this is something that will inevitably prove to be a struggle. In order to make IoT a success, there is a need to collaborate and pull products together, as well as share responsibility and effectively determine who is responsible for issues and solving these issues when things inevitably do go wrong.


Predictions on the future of IoT

The early 90’s saw the birth of mainstream internet, a concept not many people understood at the time, fast forward to now where nearly 90% of us are recent internet users. Similarly, IoT is also still in its beginning stages with lots of advancements still to come. Dan Russell said:

’The demand for IoT as an end to end solution is growing and we can see an uptake in both software and hardware. The majority of IoT tech that we currently use for day to day activities include weather and traffic updates, and ultimately the future of IoT lies with these kinds of technologies that make our lives easier both inside and outside our homes, from interactive fridge’s and smart boilers, to smart cars.

We are seeing the crossover from software companies manufacturing cars and vice versa. Where before we would only see Manufacturers like McLaren having pre-emptive IoT solutions in their cars, we can now see that filtering all the way down to less expensive cars, giving the wider public access IoT solutions as well.’’

The future of IoT is powerful and moving fast, if you want to stay ahead of the curve and explore the potential of IoT for your business, feel free to request a call back here. As a complete IoT solutions provider, our team of experts will be more than happy to help.


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