How does IoT work?

An IoT ecosystem consists of web-enabled smart devices that use embedded systems, such as processors, sensors, and communications hardware, to collect, send, and act on the data they acquire from their environments. IoT devices share the sensor data they collect by connecting to an IoT gateway or other edge device where the data is sent to the cloud to be analyzed or analyzed locally. Sometimes these devices communicate with other related devices and act on the information they receive from each other.

Devices do most of the work without human intervention, although people can interact with devices – for example, to configure them, give them instructions, or access data.

IoT can also use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to help make data collection processes easier and more dynamic.