On
February 13, the Chicago Connectory hosted Roberto Barbero,
IoT and smart analytics specialist at Google Cloud, for an informational
session on the Internet of Things with Google Cloud.
In
recent years, IoT has made industries like manufacturing, healthcare,
transportation, insurance, and consumer products produce seemingly endless
amounts of data. However, connecting devices simply to gather data is only a
fraction of IoT’s true capability. Roberto explained that for organizations to
see valuable returns on IoT initiatives, they should be successfully generating
insights from their data to make better business decisions. Roberto then elaborated
on how Google Cloud can better enable this process and walked the audience
through device onboarding and registration.
He
also provided specific examples of Google Cloud customers who are working with IoT.
For example, Geotab is a company that provides data-driven insights on commercial
fleet vehicles. Their data can include a variety of information on engine
speeds, ambient air temperatures, driving/weather conditions and more.
Originally, Geotab self-hosted all customer databases on their servers.
However, once it became too complex to efficiently maintain, they switched over
to Google Cloud.
Another
Google Cloud customer, LG, uses Edge TPU and Cloud AI to improve the detection
of faulty computer screens from ~60% to 99.9%. This has made it significantly
more efficient for LG to spot errors saving them $20 million a year.
Roberto
concluded the session with a live demonstration of device onboarding and
configuration on Google Cloud. He ran a prediction model that he trained in the
cloud with images. This prediction model recognized whether or not there were
kit-kat candy bars in a photo and correctly identified them. His demo showed
that Google Cloud gives users the tools and flexibility to send data to the
cloud and simple ways to do something meaningful with that data.
Thank
you to Roberto and the Google Cloud team for hosting their event at the Chicago
Connectory!