Transportation and logistics

Transportation and logistics will be significant, if not the leading driver in IoT. The use cases involve tracking the asset on devices being delivered, transported, or shipped, whether that's on a truck, train, plane, or boat. This is also the area of connected vehicles that communicate to offer assistance to the driver, or preventative maintenance on behalf of the driver. Right now, an average vehicle purchased new off a lot will have about 100 sensors. That number will double as vehicle-to-vehicle communication, vehicle-to-road communication, and automated driving become must-have features for safety or comfort. This has important roles beyond consumer vehicles, and extends to rail lines and shipping fleets that cannot absorb any downtime. We will also see service trucks that can track assets within a service vehicle. Some of the use cases can be very simple, but also very costly, such as monitoring the location of service vehicles in the delivery of stock. Systems are needed to automatically route trucks and service personnel to locations based on demand versus routine.

This mobile-type category has the requirement of geolocation awareness. Much of this comes from GPS navigation. From an IoT perspective, the data analyzed would include assets and time, but also spatial coordinates.