App-controlled electric cars, cloud computing is becoming a common scenario Internet of things set to take over Indian lives

THE FUTURE IS HERE

While the internet took 25 years to connect people and products across the world, the new age devices may help achieve the same within five to seven years with the rising ‘internet of things’.

Ericsson vice-president and head (technology) Manoj Dawane says, “Today is the era of Internet of things where we are talking about machine to machine connectivity (M2M). Ericsson’s connected vehicle cloud is one such example where with the help of cloud connectivity, we can control the vehicle through a remote device.”

Mahindra, too in 2013 had launched Reva e2o in collaboration with Vodafone in metro cities here. The fully electric car is connected to the internet and can be controlled with simple smartphone apps.

The owner can lock or unlock the car through the app, can control its air conditioning and monitor its location too.

“M2M has the ability to transform cars into intel- ligent devices that exchange real time information and open up a range of ground breaking new services for the customer — especially the ability to control and monitor the car functions remotely”, said Kartik Gopal, general manager mobility solutions and business development, Mahindra Reva Electric Vehicles, in a case study.

However, despite the innovations, its sales figures till a year back stood at a dismal less than 500 units since its debut in March 2013.

The ‘Internet of things’, though continues to expand its foothold. With Google’scloud print, one can print from anywhere in the world if the printer is connected to the internet. Smartphone applications have also given a major boost to this phenomenon.

“Today, with the help of a small sensor connected to a 2G network, we can know about the features of soil that can be beneficial to the farmers. Also, such technologies do not need high speed connectivity and can run of basic 2G networks”, added Mr Dwane

“Such technologies will empower the people (farmers) to plan things centrally and and provide effective advisory services all over”, says Raghu Kanchustambham, CEO, Concept Waves whose app ‘Livelihood 360’ won the ‘Best app in Asia’ award in October last year.

The app helps farmers estimate their yield by using a feature phone.