The Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT), where intelligent devices can monitor events, fuse sensor data from a variety of sources, use local and distributed intelligence to determine a best course of action, and then act to control or manipulate objects the physical world
Internet of Robotic Things is a field of research that describes the collaboration of the fields of Internet of Things and Robotics.
IoRT is not IoT aided by Robotics or Robotics driven by IoT- but rather an amalgamation of the disciplines. It was slowly formed as a result of realizations that the two fields had a lot of overlapping of purpose, and could greatly benefit from a focus on their combination.
Although the concept of IoT has existed for more than two decades, and robotics even longer, IoRT is a rather novel field of research. The convergence of the two areas had been gradual but the term IoRT was coined and the concept formally defined in a 2014 report.
IoRT is also supported by the fields of Edge Computing, Cloud Computing, Cloud Robotics, and AI in IoT.
IoRT is how we can create truly autonomous networks capable of carrying out complex tasks in the physical world. The ability of robotic technology to manipulate the physical world, and the capabilities of IoT to create independent and smart networks, together has great potential.
Internet of Things is about limiting human involvement in that communication network. The internet here becomes not a network of humans connected through devices, but a network of devices talking to each other. IoT is basically a network of things capable of communicating with other things.
Robotics is also about reducing human involvement. With robotics, we develop ways to delegate human tasks to machines. Robots can assist or even replace humans in doing tasks.
So it makes sense that these disciplines can benefit from collaboration. Robotics and IoT working together are how we can actually bring the power of computing into the physical world.
