Vijay Kumar and Rahul Mangharam at UPenn comment on the Internet of Things

Vijay Kumar and Rahul Mangharam, TerraSwarm PIs and Professors of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, recently discussed the Internet of Things in an article in the Daily Pennsylvanian (Pennscholars lead development of the Internet of Things). 

Kumar, the incoming Dean for the Engineering school at UPenn, was quoted:

“The Internet of Things today is a lot about Fitbits and Apple watches.  But tomorrow it will be the things that run homes [and] schools, reason about the world, take actions, and we will interact with them at a very high level.”

According to UPenn faculty member Rahul Mangharam:

“Now wearables are so personal and intimate and they try and work with your life. You have to have a very good understanding of human behavior — what a human wants and needs — and be able to design that.”

Mangharam, Kumar and other UPenn faculty member have been involved with the Penn xLAB, which officially opened this past summer. The xLAB team has been working on several products, including interactive Legos that hook up to a TV to allow a child to interact with his or her toy as well as an immersive yoga mat. 

Mangharam is quoted in the article:

“Each company is interpreting the Internet of Things in their own way.  This is how computing was in the '70s and now it’s coming back to that — like Apple products only work with Apple.”

Cisco predicts that at least 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020, so this area of technological advancement is one that will quickly emerge in future society and may spark more policy questions related to the safety and privacy of the Internet.

To read the entire article, go to: Penn Scholars Lead Development of the Internet of Things.