MSR IoT Summer School at IISc Bangalore
“Beam me up, Scotty!” said
Captain Kirk in the popular TV serial Star
Trek. The technology to travel from one place to another instantly is not yet
a reality. However, tremendous strides have been made in many areas of science
and technology. Driverless cars have started sharing roads with regular cars.
People living in remote areas with no medical facilities have started receiving
sound medical advice via phones with sensors measuring the patients’ pressure,
pulse rate etc. Small, inexpensive and connected sensors are the backbone of these
leaps in technologies. Such a network of devices, vehicles and buildings has
embedded electronics, software and sensors. It also has network connectivity to
collect and exchange data. These schemes are referred to as Internet of Things (IoT).
Microsoft Research and the
Department of Computational & Data Sciences at IISc came together to conduct
an event on IoT. The event was called MSR
India Summer School 2016 on IoT and took place from June 20th to
25th at the IISc campus. It brought together academic researchers, entrepreneurs
and students and provided an excellent platform to disseminate information on
the research ideas being pursued at Microsoft Research and other companies. The
work and ideas presented were cutting edge. Dr. Shaz Qadeer from Microsoft
Research presented his work on a novel programming language called P, which is
suited for testing sensors and devices, such as an USB device. Dr Rajeev Shorey
from TCS Innovation Lab explained how Industrial Internet of Technologies
(IIoT) uses IoT to improve industrial manufacturing. Michael Depa, an MIT
alumnus, presented the work on Diabetes diagnosis. This is an example of how
IoT is improving human lives. Dr. Ranveer Chandra from Microsoft Research explained
the networking issues with sensors. He also explained how IoT optimizes how
resources are used in an agriculture farm, using a technique called FarmBeats.
Although the specific example was applicable to developed countries which have
large farm sizes, the problem is extremely relevant to India too since the
total farm output needs to double in India by the year 2050. Dr Amarjeet Singh,
an entrepreneur at Zenatrix, explained how IoT makes electrical appliances more
efficient. In this energy starved world, this is a problem that is crying out
for a solution. Zainul Charbiwala from Tricog Healthcare explained how the
humble ECG machine is entering the modern era using IoT. The Tricog system has
helped over 70,000 patients in south India. Dr Ronak Sutaria narrated his
experience on urban air quality monitoring. Dr Ashish Kapoor, from Microsoft
Research, explained how machine learning and IoT improves weather forecasting
and disaster management in Rwanda. Prof TVS Hari from IISc explained his work
on Indoor localization and vehicle classification. Finally, Prof Marco
Grusteser of Rutgers University explained how IoT is used for pedestrian safety
and also privacy issues with connected vehicle. Additionally, some of the participants
presented projects that they did as part of a Hackathon. They were given
sensors, electronic components and computing resources. It was an exhilarating
experience to listen to the diverse ideas and feel the passion with which they
worked on them.
We cannot predict what technologies will be like in the
future. However, as is evident from the work and ideas presented during this
event, IoT is already improving lives of people.
posted by Sumant Sarkar @ Monday, June 27, 2016
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