Bluetooth IoT infrastructure network with immersive experience

Abstract

A smart factory requires an efficient interaction between a number of physical components on the factory floor with the respective analytical and decision making components from digital domain. The flow of this information has to be continuous in order to reduce the downtime and maintain the productivity target. A smart factory should provide immediate access to the status of processes and device components to the relevant factory operators. With advancement in the concept of internet of things (IoT), many industrial devices on the factory floor now have wireless connectivity. Bluetooth technology is increasingly being used in order to provide operational and productivity status of devices to the factory floor operator. The operator typically has a smart device such as a tablet from where the respective devices can be monitored or controlled. As Bluetooth has a limited range, typically around 5–10 meters, an operator needs to come within this range of the device in order to connect with the respective industrial device and obtain its health and operational status data. Also Bluetooth mainly provides a point-to-point connectivity, thus at a time only one industrial device can be connected. For a factory floor that can have hundreds and thousands of such devices, this task of personally going and obtaining the data from every individual device could be tedious and cumbersome.