Learning how to enable an intelligent planet through IoT

At the show Advantech had a variety of solutions, and solution partnerships on show to demonstrate why it is considered the world leader in IoT technology. The portfolio included for customers in the manufacturing, transport, healthcare, energy and construction sectors, to list but a few, as well as IoT enablers the world over.

Advantech showcased along with Eco Partners with solutions that can help various industry sectors increase productivity, on both a software and hardware level. For example, Advantech and software developer Nexiona SRL were showing an Industry First Standalone IoT Platform.

Built by combining Nexiona’s MIIMETIQ LITE application and Advantech’s ARK-1123 Embedded Gateway, this platform will appeal to industrial customers who are sensitive about their data and wish to introduce in-house IoT technology in a manageable, non-disruptive way.

In addition, the Advantech stand featured a charging station for a battery-powered mini-tesla car. The demo charging station was connected to a smart meter which is used in a real Tesla charging station in Northern Taiwan. The smart meter was then connected to Advantech's UBC-330 Mbed-edge gateway which is, in turn, managed by Mbed Cloud – just as it would in a real deployment.

In collaboration with device management and security specialist Ardexa, Advantech also had a benchmark program on show that provides secure data connections, remote control, edge-processing and field service tools to over 150 energy plants for one of the largest renewable energy asset managers across Europe.

It was clear to see from the stand and solutions how Advantech helps set the foundation for dynamic green energy production, storage and distribution.

Additionally when it comes to healthcare, Advantech featured the ‘WellPoint’ patient self-testing kiosk in partnership with BeWell Innovations, which I had a go on and tested myself! The WellPoint kiosk allows people to independently measure their own vital parameters at a point-of-care, and it delivers the resulting health parameters to physicians. This frees up time for caregivers to perform more critical tasks. The kiosk can also be valuable in communities where medical facilities are less accessible.

Ard Schalkwijk, Sales Manager in Europe for the iHealthcare division said: “The health care division is something that is important to Advantech as the industry is suffering from a number of reasons at the moment including increase in cost and ageing populations.” He explained the tech can play an important role in aiding these trends.

Presenting in a new Enabling IoT section Advantech had the new solution powered by BTI on show too. In industries like mining, oil and gas, manufacturing, and construction to public services like firefighting, worker safety remains a prime concern and a constant challenge. This new solution showcased an out-of-the-box, end-to-end IoT architecture for worker health and safety monitoring.

It features MIOTY LPWAN technology from BTI, Advantech gateways powered by Intel Core i5 processors, and the Hitachi Solutions IoT Service Hub hosted on Microsoft Azure cloud.  Advantech and Sioux LIME also partnered up at the congress and showed its AI and Cognitive Systems, and there were demonstrations to show how together the companies can bring machine learning to the high-tech industry by developing and manufacturing non-standard solutions for systems and processes.

Finally at the show Advantech has solutions on show from its solutions partnership with Geprom. It featured the innovative Legato Sapient, a flexible, scalable and modular MES system to control production in real time. Legato plans, controls and monitors in real time all the information of the productive process. The system has more than 24 independent units that are implemented according to the client’s needs. The collected data is processed and stored in real time and is turned into a personalised report for its analysis and decision making.

With its global footprint, Advantech is today the biggest IoT partner in the world. The company was the first to conceptualise co-creation as ‘the’ way to approach the IoT market. With its strong base in hardware platforms, the company has been actively promoting the co-creation model, working with SRP software partners and system integrators to build a complete industrial IoT (IIoT) supply chain and accelerate the realisation of related applications.

IIoT applications are on the threshold of becoming widely implemented in various industries. However, the key to success lies with platform technology suppliers, such as Advantech, and its ability to work closely with industry professionals to integrate and form standardised and easily duplicated SRPs based on a combination of software and hardware products, and this was a clear message at the IoT World Congress show with so many solutions partners exhibiting there with Advantech.