The Internet of Things (IoT) is the mixed martial art of information technology. It is because IoT systems are composed of diverse and large numbers of information devices that are intricately intertwined through network communications, requiring many engineers from various technical fields to gather together and pool their wisdom to build an IoT system.
Consider, as an example, an autonomous driving system. It crosses various technical domains as follows.
- Embedded Systems
- Development of autonomous determination software for driving
- Development of communication system between ECUs
- Control Systems
- Development of ECU hardware to control mechanical and electrical systems
- IT & Network
- Development of Web UI and smartphone applications
- Management and maintenance of cloud servers for statistical processing of big data
- Realization of efficient inter-vehicle and inter-device communication control
- application Systems
- Development of vehicle assignment management and traffic flow management applications
However, we face the following challenges to realizing such an IoT system.
- Complexity of the problem path
- It can hold potential problems that only become visible when integrated.
- Inconsistency between various devices.
- Complexity of cause investigation
- Difficult to investigate what and where is going on.
- Debugging an entire system is complicated by nature.
- Costs of verification and experimentation
- Engineers in various fields are needed
- labor-intensive, time-consuming, and expensive.
- Thus, it is not easy to verification
Next, consider the potential challenges when building IoT services using robots.
- No one knows how to create effective new services using robots.
- When considering a new service, it takes too much preparation and time to test it with an actual robot.
- System requirements may change frequently, requiring high effort to apply changes
- Difficulty in combining causes frequent trouble during testing.
Hakoniwa intends to solve such technical issues and accelerate the development of IoT systems and the construction of services.