Merging the Internet of Things and Robotics

According to various reports, the number and variety of robot applications are increasing, both in industry and in our daily lives. First developed as a tool, nowadays a robot can be integrated as an entity in the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT’s infrastructure enables connections between different entities (living or nonliving), using different but interoperable communication protocols. Thus, in the IoT, a robot can be connected as a thing and establish connections with other things over the Internet, either as a source of information and/or as a consumer. The integration of robots within the IoT can offer great advantages in many fields, some of them presented in this paper. Still, despite the great benefits brought by the integration of robots within the IoT, this evolution towards IoT raises some technical issues. One of these issues referring to the identification of connected things can be solved by using the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. This technology offers a low cost solution to uniquely identify things that should be connected to the IoT. Also, the recently developed IoT platforms bridge the gap between the real and the virtual world. This paper describes some aspects related to the technologies involved in the transformation of the robot from a “tool” to a “thing” connected in the Internet of things. Key-Words: Robot, Radio frequency identification, Internet of things, Internet of things platform