Japanese government to set up council for 'Internet of Things' development

TOKYO - The Japanese government will set up a joint council of public- and private-sector parties by the end of this fiscal year to develop and utilize technologies for the Internet of Things, or IoT.

The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry will call on more than 100 companies and groups, including major automakers, telecommunications and electronics firms, to join the council.

The council will prepare and improve an infrastructure to instantly process vast amounts of data, while developing technology to safely stop automatically operated devices in case of an emergency.

The "Internet of Things" refers to items equipped with sensors and communications equipment for data collection. Gathered information, such as speed, gradient, temperature and sound, will be used in developing new services and technologies. The system is expected to be utilized in the introduction of self-driving vehicles and robots for livelihood support, as well as to establish an efficient production system based on meticulous demand forecasts.

In a society where IoT technologies are utilized, almost everything is equipped with sensors, and the enormous amount of information collected through them will be used in offering a variety of services.

Such services expected to be put into practical use include a drone to deliver food and daily necessities to the homes of elderly people, a robot tasked with agricultural work and an automatically operated shuttle bus to efficiently serve sparsely populated areas.

With sensors constantly sending and receiving information via the Internet, the volume of data communicated in 2020 is estimated to be 1,000 times that of 2010.

Members of the council will jointly develop new information-processing technology, which will be able to instantly handle vast amounts of data.

They will also create a system to safely stop automatically operated devices, such as self-driving cars, in case they are cyber-attacked, or at risk of accidents, among other similar situations. Hoping to develop such technologies in fiscal 2018, the ministry plans to include related funds in the budget request for the next fiscal year.

Compared to Europe and the United States, where public and private sectors cooperate in developing IoT-related technologies, Japan lags behind in the field.