Recent Progress on the Convergence of the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence

The overwhelming increase of ubiquitous data, connections, and services brings serious challenges, in particular facing the demanding requirements of the Internet of Things (IoT). In order to seek better solutions and achieve more efficient information retrieval, artificial intelligence (AI) serves as a strong technical earthquake and contributes a lot to data analysis and decision making. It plays a compelling role in prompting digital and intelligent services. In this article, we focus on and emphasize the great significance pertaining to the convergence of IoT and AI. We first elaborate two typical forms of AI, namely knowledge-enabled AI and data-driven AI, with a comparison between respective advantages and disadvantages. Then we survey recent progress relating to the convergence of AI throughout the IoT architecture, from the sensing layer through the network layer to the application layer. In addition, a case study of a smart city is presented illustrating the convergence between IoT and AI. Furthermore, we point out open issues worth further research. The convergence of IoT and AI marries the merits of both and enables strong capability of resolving a broad range of problems.