The top IIoT asset tracking trends shaping the US market

Track & Talk USA is the US edition of Sensolus’s video channel exploring how IoT can make every asset visible, from giant containers to small boxes, both outdoor and indoor. In this first episode, Kristoff sits down with Steve Logue, General Manager USA, to discuss the three trends reshaping IoT asset tracking in the US market: technology, regulation, and AI.

Why declining costs and complexity are opening up new use cases.

Ten years ago, you would never deploy tracking solutions to track assets worth less than $1,000. The ROI simply wasn’t there. That’s changing. Costs are declining, complexity is declining, and that opens up the ability to track lower-value assets that were previously out of reach.

And it’s not just cost. Battery life is improving beyond the IoT industry, like sectors such as autonomous vehicles. It’s not just the three-cell lithium batteries in the trackers themselves, but also the firmware algorithms developed to manage those batteries, and the use of low power connectivity. Sensolus recently launched a tracker enabled by LTE-M technology in addition to NB-IoT. All these factors are coming together to reduce costs and extend the life of solutions in the field.

Why having more protocols reduces risk.

With trackers that can work on both LTE-M and NB-IoT, there’s built-in redundancy ensuring better connectivity and reducing risk. In the future, there may be strategic changes to NB-IoT networks, as happened with Sigfox years ago. That redundancy protects customers from being exposed to those shifts.

How SpaceX and Project Kuiper are changing what’s possible.

The solution today is primarily for land-based applications such as tracking trailers, containers, and reusable pallets over land. But two huge initiatives are underway globally to blanket the earth in a signal. SpaceX, run by Elon Musk, is launching low earth orbiting satellites to provide global coverage. Amazon has Project Kuiper doing the same. Sensolus is exploring enabling tracking devices with satellite connectivity. It’s anytime, anywhere tracking.

Data privacy, GDPR, and what’s coming for US companies.

IoT solutions are capturing so much data that the questions around it are becoming unavoidable: Where is my data? How long do I retain it? What do I do with it? Who owns it? Europe is ahead of the US in terms of GDPR, but US companies are catching up.

At Sensolus, the approach is clear: comply with all laws in place, track assets (not people) and hold security to the highest standards. With all the data being captured, there’s vulnerability. The answer is to tackle it by design, keeping it high on the R&D agenda to make sure it’s covered the way it should be done.

How generative AI is turning asset data into action.

AI is more than a buzzword. It’s a disruptive force comparable to the introduction of the internet and the mobile phone. More and more companies are figuring out how to get real value out of it. At Sensolus, AI helps users get the most out of the mountain of data collected on location, movement, and condition of assets.

A user can go into the platform and ask: where are the anomalies with my fleet in the field, and what actions should I take? Or, as a new user: how do I create a dashboard to track my assets? The generative AI is backed by the large language model Claude from Anthropic. What AI is doing here is democratizing the ability to deploy IoT solutions so that anyone can do it. AI is the bridge to make even non-technical users get the full power of the technology, making it easy to access insights, act on data, and change processes.