What does IoT have to do with racing toy-cars? Everything (if you want to learn more about IoT). Much has been written about IoT but nothing comes close to explaining the concept like experience-based learning. Imagine being at a global conference and racing toy-cars with other attendees. And that is exactly what happened at the Global Altair Technology Conference in Detroit, Michigan. Guests were invited to participate in a race using remote-controlled cars to learn about IoT while playfully trying to win. And yes, there were bragging rights for the fastest race and fastest lap winners.
What does it take to provide that first-hand experience with IoT? A robust IoT platform, amazing partners, and a childlike enthusiasm. Steve Fine, Altair’s director of IoT applications takes his role as the principal of the race-track pit crew very seriously. “Having been responsible for setting up the demonstrator, I am convinced that this racetrack experience provides an ideal ground for players to generate more application ideas once they interact with the technology first-hand in this interactive environment,” he said.

The Altair IoT racetrack pit crew included Bosch, Dell/Intel, and Solace, who together brought the racing experience alive with real-time data visualization. A multi-sensor device from Bosch (XDK) captured real-time data from the cars during the race. Software running on the Dell/Intel gateway collected lap data from the track (e.g. number of laps and lap times) and car throttle positions. All this data was then put on the Solace high-performance messaging bus – a messaging infrastructure that allow different systems to communicate through a shared set of interfaces – to use the data from local real-time visualization. Altair® SmartWorks™ was the cloud platform and leveraged Altair® Panopticon™ for ready-to-run machine learning algorithms and real-time visualization. All that was then required was a friendly competition to make the most of this interactive IoT experience.

With eyes on the race and guided by real-time data visualization driven by data collected using sensors on the racetrack onto the IoT cloud platform running the application, the Altair IoT racetrack provided the best opportunity to understand a complex concept and experience IoT first-hand. Participants and onlookers alike were curious to know what technology components from the demo they could leverage in their businesses.

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