underway for years, and it’s a crowded field. But there’s always the chance that the solution that ultimately prevails isn’t currently on the radar of most observers.
One candidate in this category is Reality Editor, an app developed at MIT’s Fluid Interfaces Lab. Like Wink and other hubs, Reality Editor allows users to establish relationships between devices. However, this is done using an augmented reality overlay in which a user points a smartphones at objects and connects them by tracing lines on the screen.
Reality Editor’s slick, intuitive user experience suggests tantalizing prospects for the future of software design and the IoT. Support for the app’s development platform, Open Hybrid, has yet to be built into any consumer products upfront, according to a Fast Company report.
And there’s another possibility still: that the company or industry that will enable the IoT to take its next leap forward is hiding in plain sight. Nott says one candidate could be Internet service providers, a group that already has hardware installed in millions of households, and which includes telecommunications giant AT&T in Madison and other areas.
“I think the likely winner is going to be something that gets installed in your home that we’re not all thinking about right now,” Nott says, adding that major changes are likely at least five years away. “Somebody who’s already got a good foothold in the home space will eventually either buy one of these hubs or they’ll invent their own device. If AT&T said, ‘We want to set you up with a smart home,’ they could just send you a new modem. They could literally do it overnight.”
