IoT creates an integrated world of physical and life science

Abstract

Until the end of the twentieth century, engineering has progressed with primary attention focused on individual products. And living humans operated nonliving machines from outside, on the basis of physical science. But as soon as we entered the twenty-first century, the environments and situations came to change so frequently and extensively. Therefore, to cope with this situation, humans started to work together as a team and later products also came to work together as a team. But these days, humans and machines are distinctly separated. IoT, however, has changed the scene. As it is based on Internet, machines and humans get rid of the traditional instruction–response interaction and they are now moving toward communicating with each other. To fully utilize these communication capabilities and to establish a true connected society, we need to break the wall between physical science and life science and integrate them. This integration and the addition of communication capabilities will bring us a completely new world we have never experienced in engineering history.