The Technology Strategy Board is investing £500,000 in preparatory studies to develop strategies for moving towards a converged and open application and services marketplace in the Internet of Things. Following the preparatory studies, we will invest up to £4m in a competition for a demonstrator in 2012.

‘Internet of Things’ describes the trend for environments, buildings, vehicles, clothing, portable devices and other objects to have more and more information associated with them and/or the ability to sense, communicate, network and produce new information. A widespread Internet of Things could transform how we live in our cities, how we travel, how we manage our lives sustainably, how we age, and how services and entertainment accompany us and adapt as our surroundings change.

It is estimated that the number of connected objects will reach 50bn by 2020 and that the potential added value of services enabled by the Internet of Things is in the hundreds of billions of pounds a year. This potential is held back by poorly understood business models and value cases, fragmentation and the poor availability of data from ‘things’.

A more converged scenario where there is increased, easier and harmonised access to data about ‘things’ within and across domains would cause a step change in the rate of innovation and create a marketplace for applications and services.

We are inviting proposals for preparatory studies to explore, from a business and user perspective, the case for moving towards an Internet of Things converged scenario, and to develop strategies and plans to get there.

Funded projects will explore a number of questions in depth, working individually and as a group. We will award contracts of up to £50k to cover the total project costs.

At the end of the projects, a detailed report will be required for dissemination by the Technology Strategy Board. The findings will inform the development of a Convergence Demonstrator, which will address collaboratively the convergence challenges and encourage the emergence of a marketplace for applications and services in the UK. We expect that all funded participants will be well prepared to bid to participate in the demonstrator. We anticipate that these studies will also highlight unsolved or poorly addressed research and technology challenges, which the Technology Strategy Board and its co-funders may consider addressing at a later stage.

We are inviting applications from single UK-based companies as leads. Collaboration with other companies or organisations is strongly encouraged via sub-contracted partners. We welcome the participation of universities as part of wider business-led projects. Leads and their partners can be from any sector, for example digital, transport, logistics, healthcare, retail, energy, modern built environment, creative industries.

The competition brief is available for download to the right.  Companies interested in this competition are strongly encouraged to join the competition group at https://ktn.innovateuk.org/web/internet-of-things-convergence where more information about the competition and updates will be found.