Over the last ten years, we have seen the transformation of Bosch first into an IoT company, and more recently into an AIoT company. IoT – the Internet of Things – provides basic connectivity and already enables important use cases such as condition monitoring or data-driven applications for physical products. AI – Artificial Intelligence – is the new game changer, utilizing the massive amounts of data we can generate from the IoT to help us understand how our products are performing in the field and how our customers are using them. New digital features for physical products can be enabled using the combination of AI and IoT together – or in short, AIoT, as we are now calling it.

AIoT is a key paradigm that will shape our industry for the next decade. We are seeing this in many domains. Our new wafer fab in Dresden has been designed as an AIoT factory from the beginning, providing us with real-time insights and a level of transparency and accuracy that was never possible before. Or take, as another example, mobility. The car of the future is an AIoT device, fully connected with flexible partitioning of software functions between the car and the cloud. Automated driving, for example, will generate massive amounts of data that can only be evaluated with AI methods. Efficiently managing the new triple alliance of hardware, software and AI with IoT-enabled connectivity will be key to success, not only in the automotive industry.

The AIoT Playbook is an important contribution to the broad adoption of AIoT, as we are still in the early stages of this new paradigm. The AIoT Playbook is a valuable tool for managers with a digital transformation agenda, product managers, project managers and solution architects. By combining the perspective of many Bosch experts with specialists from other companies and industries, the team has managed to bring together an impressive 360-degree perspective on what is important for executing an AIoT vision: from business to technology.

Dr. Volkmar Denner

Chairman, Board of Management of Robert Bosch GmbH