collaboration

“What may set IBM apart is the sheer number of IoT playing fields it engages in addition to AI and analytics, including cloud, development tool set, services, device management, storage and security. Add to that its longstanding reach into enterprise and industrial IT.

"Where public clouds [such as Microsoft IoT Hub and AWS] have APIs, Watson has whole solutions," said Bret Greenstein, IBM's global vice president of Watson IoT offerings, which is not to say that IBM insists on provisioning end-to-end IoT deployments; certainly, as part of the IBM Cloud, the Watson IoT platform is all about cross-vendor integration.” Everyone plays with everyone else.

“The pattern in IoT is the same as the pattern in cloud; we're containerizing everything.”

These connected robots contain complex sensor networks to gather information about everything from humidity levels, temperature, vibration and acoustic levels, which feeds back information about real-time machine effectiveness.

Anyone looking at the data analytics can instantly see if there is a dangerous situation or simply a performance issue that needs fixing.