Funded Projects

Rapid expansion of internet-of-things (IoT) will produce an extremely large volume of data from connected devices. While this raw data holds critical information and insights, it is extremely difficult for humans to parse large volume of data and take actions in real time. This is where artificial intelligence (AI) steps in to provide real-time actionable insights. While the synergistic relation between IoT and AI holds the key for success of IoT, there are several challenges with the current framework in which IoT device collects raw data and uses cloud services for storage and AI analysis before the decisions/insights are made available to the end-user. The 3 outstanding challenges are: i) transmission of large volume of data creates a bottleneck for communication network and increases latency; ii) use of cloud services increases probability for security breaches; and iii) use of rigid silicon electronics for IoT devices limits their use in the growing flexible devices market, which encompasses healthcare to consumer applications. To address the above-mentioned challenges, we will explore development of a new generation of “super-IoT” devices that will not require cloud services for AI based analysis and will also be flexible. The proposed IoT devices can lead to a new framework for IoT that will be more secure and also need less transmission bandwidth than the existing IoT devices. We envision that these new generation of IoT devices will find applications in a wide variety of fields, from healthcare to automotive to structural health monitoring.