Guest Editorial Special Section on Advances and Applications of Internet of Things for Smart Automated Systems

In 1999, Kevin Ashton envisioned a novel paradigm named Internet of Things (IoT), in which all things could see, hear, and smell the world for themselves, and interact with each other and cooperate with their neighbors to reach some common desired goals. In the following years, the IoT ideas started to spread rapidly due to the technology advancements in the fields of microelectromechanical systems and most recently, nanoelectromechanical systems, computers, and wireless communications, resulting in autonomous everyday thing augmented with sensing/actuation, storage, processing, and network capabilities. Their new applications emerged daily from smart homes to smart cities, from automobiles to high-speed trains, from new-born care devices to patient operating rooms and entire hospitals, and from manufacturing factories to agricultural food plants. IoT is one of the fastest growing technical areas across almost all engineering disciplines and touches almost all verticals of the World Economy. It represents major investments in commercial and government initiatives. We expect to have over 40% Compound Annual Growth Rate year over year in the commercial marketplace and to dominate “traffic” on the Internet within the next decade.