Crafting IoT-enabled Smart Toys for kids

 

Smart Toys

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most sought-after technologies in the world today. Given that companies around the world are increasingly looking for digital solutions to stay relevant and deliver superior customer experiences, a technology that makes their products “smarter” by learning from users, analyzing data to produce actionable insights Generating, and offering manufacturers newer ways to reach your customers, is going to be a big deal.

A great customer experience is a key differentiator between brands that have high loyalty and brands that don’t work. Therefore, nowadays products should not only serve a specific purpose, but also have the ability to learn, evolve and create more value in order to become an integral part of the daily routine of their users and make themselves indispensable.

In the past few years, great strides have been made in consumer IoT. We are looking at 22 billion devices in 2018 nearly 39 billion in 2025. By the end of 2019, spending on smart home systems in the US was around $ 103 billion with a projected spending of $ 157 billion by 2023. Much of these IoT solutions include lighting systems, voice assistants, smart speakers, and more. One segment that is also based on the company’s IoT wave to make increasingly innovative products is toys.

Smart toys don’t sound as common as smart lights or smart TVs, but make no mistake, they’re here and they’re growing. The market is expected to register a CAGR of 28% in the next 5 years. With the rise of work from home, where lessons have moved from schools to living rooms, smart toys have emerged as an interesting means of learning for children. Some popular smart toys are:

  • Talking toys like Dino from CogniToys, which use the Internet and IBM Watson’s natural language processing technology to respond to children based on their age, interests and skills.
  • SmartGurlz companions that can be controlled from mobile devices and teach children a range of skills, such as: B. coding
  • Monitoring toys that parents can use to keep an eye on their children while the children stay busy
  • Fisher-Price’s Smart Toy Bear that learns from the child’s behavior to provide personalized experiences and stays connected to the mobile app to keep parents informed of the child’s progress and activities

Smart toys

In general, they differ from conventional toys in two major ways. You learn from the way children interact with them and communicate accordingly.

Thus, they remain relevant for a long time and become more of a companion than something that only briefly arouses a child’s imagination, and secondly, they help parents train and supervise their children. Because of its increased appeal, it is exploring how the Internet of Things can help make it better and help parents and children do more.

However, this development has also gripped a major problem, and this is common to all intelligent devices. A concern that still keeps a number of business leaders on the fence when it comes to the rollout of IoT, even though they are aware of the obvious benefits.

That concern concerns cybersecurity, and in the case of toys, the risks are even greater because they are children we are talking about.

We started the article by looking at how important it is for brands to create great customer experiences, and how data collected from users can help companies know their customers better and create customized experiences.

Because data is so important, if you collect it, you also run the risk of stealing it. For this reason, in addition to the race to introduce new technologies, companies are also striving to strengthen cybersecurity.

If you want to enter the creative and emerging segment of intelligent toys as a company director in an IoT development company, your product can involve the following risks:

  • Connect to unsecured networks: Always have an alert mechanism in your Internet of Things solutions so that the controllers are discouraged if someone tries to connect the toy to open networks that give hackers easy access to confidential information
  • Transfer of data to third parties: Make sure that you do not pass on Smart Toys customer data to external agencies. A wider spread also carries a higher risk of leaks
  • Location tracking: Some toys track and broadcast their locations, and anyone who wants to break in can pinpoint the location of children who are playing with them. If the toy needs to track the location, make sure that the data is encrypted so that it cannot be easily decrypted and misused. Avoid collecting location information. In fact, make sure that all data transmitted to your servers is encrypted using top-notch protocols
  • Data stored in the cloud: Avoid storing data in the cloud to prevent unforeseen events from being compromised. Use edge computing mechanisms for rapid data analysis and remove it once the necessary insights have been received and recorded

Similar to many traditional electronic goods, there are many ways toys can benefit from IoT innovations. Just like the benefits, the risks are real but not insurmountable.

When IoT is built into a product, it shouldn’t be just an add-on, but the core around which the entire product needs to be redefined in order to achieve maximum value.

At every stage of the development plan, functionality and security must go hand in hand for the end result to be truly exciting and safe. Once released, plan to provide regular updates to the product that will provide the latest security measures to keep it relevant and protected from attack for a long time.


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