RPA IoT in 2024: How It Works, 12 Use Cases & 3 Benefits

RPA–IoT integration has the potential to transform how companies use IoT data in their business processes. Following the Pandemic: 

• 47% of organizations planned increase their IoT investments 
• 76% of enterprises have increased automation initiatives 

Companies can leverage more automation in their IoT investments to increase the ROI of both automation and IoT initiatives.

In this article, we will explain what RPA IoT is, its 3 benefits to companies, and 12 use cases. 

What is RPA IoT? 

End users are starting to talk about RPA IoT to highlight how RPA tools can bring no code automation to IoT devices.

RPA IoT is leveraging robotic process automation in internet of things projects to deliver quick, automated, and data-driven responses to events.

How does RPA IoT work?

IoT sensors gather data from the equipment and/or the environment they are placed on/in. For example: 

• A smart soil sensor picks up soil’s moisture level. 
• A GPS sensor gathers a semi-truck’s real-time location.
• A smart shelf sensor displays a shelf’s inventory level for proactive replenishment.

RPA technology can help combine these siloed datasets and send them to ERP systems and 3rd party applications to create new business intelligence.

What are the benefits of RPA IoT? 

1. Improved operational excellence 

Operational excellence is the general principle of optimizing the different dimensions of a business to meet established KPIs. RPA and IoT integration allows companies to get closer to those ideals. 

IoT devices can extract the data generated from from processes, environments, and equipment. This gives businesses an as-is picture of each building block within the larger process functions. For example, monitoring the number of bottles a bottle-filling machine has filled gives an accurate report for the day’s production (Figure 1). 

RPA technology enables companies to extract and pit the data against KPIs and historical data to pinpoint deviations. This business intelligence allows for pinpointing areas with improvement.

Learn more about RPA use cases in operational excellence.

2. Decreasing manual interventions

70-80% of rules-based tasks can be automated with RPAs. In parallel, IoT is expected to have massive economical impacts (by 2025) in: 

• Logistics 
• Manufacturing 
• Retail
• Worksites, and more. 

Robotic process automation, too, has countless use cases. The wide applicability of these artificial intelligence technologies allows businesses to use them conjunctionally to automate repetitive tasks within existing systems.

A medication reminder¹ is an IoT healthcare device (Figure 2). Online pharmacy services can use software robots to get the real-time content of the pillboxes. And then to send refill requests. This will minimize human intervention in process.  

3. Real-time responses

RPA IoT integration enables real-time responses to events for business continuity. In insurtech, for example, CCTV cameras and sensors are used during claims management for assessment and verification. 

The videos can be scanned by image recognition sensors, in real-time, reactively and proactively:

• Proactively to send automated alerts to authorities to summon them to the scene
• Reactively to confirm the insured’s claims

Learn more about IoT in insurance.

What are the use cases of RPA IoT?   

The main use cases of RPA IoT are the following: 

Worksite

1. Compliance

Internet of Things (IoT) cameras can monitor worksites and offices for safety compliance. RPA bots can record the timestamps of identified noncompliances and include them on end-of-day reports. 

2. Quality control 

IoT devices can scan manufactured products for quality control to increase service quality. RPA bots can then cross-match each product’s image with its serial number to verify quality control check. For instance, in motherboard production, heat sensors can show whether all the components are in the correct place without having to dismantle them . 

3. Predictive maintenance

The sensors on production equipments can display the health of the machine. RPA bots can monitor the figures and compare them against KPIs to schedule maintenance.

Agriculture

4. Irrigation 

Soil sensors allow for real time collection of soil’s moisture level. RPA bots can access the data from the cloud and schedule the smart irrigators accordingly, by following rules-based frameworks. 

5. Harvesting

IoT sensors can monitor the weight of the crops and the time of the day. RPA bots can then send notifications to the farmer, or initiate the smart robots, to start the harvesting process, depending on whether the crop’s weight is ideal.

Learn more about:

• RPA use cases in agriculture
• IoT use cases in agriculture

Supply chain

6. Inventory management 

Internet of Things sensors can be used on shelves in retail stores and stock rooms. They can note, in real-time, the quantity of products on the shelf through their weight. RPA bots can use their OCR capability to place reorders once the stock falls below a certain level. 

7. Fleet management 

GPS sensors can send real-time shipping containers to the cloud. RPA bots would take the data, structure it, and send it to the warehouse manager to notify them in real-time of the whereabouts of their shipments. For incoming materials, this can ensure that manufacturing is on-time. For outgoing ones, this can ensure that downstream entities are getting their goods in time. 

Real-estate

8. Listings creation

RPA bots can use the data from cameras (such as the number of cameras placed in each bedroom) to determine how many bedrooms a house has. Image recognition can also help RPA bots add details to the listing, such as whether the kitchen is open or the garden has a pool inside. 

9. Smart temperature 

Smart thermostats gather outside temperature data and transfer it to the edge of the cloud. RPA bots take the data automatically, determine what should happen to the temperature, and “order” accordingly. 

Learn more about IoT in real estate.

Cities

10. Power outage identification 

RPA bots can send automated alerts to technicians whenever a sensor’s data is showing an outage. Moreover, some RPA bots also have the technical feasibility to orchestrate other AI technologies for self-service maintenance.

11. Water management 

Water sensors can monitor water levels in dams, underground pipes, and reservoirs to monitor inflows and outflows. The unstructured and disparate data coming from different sensors can be turned into reports by RPA bots to be analyzed daily. 

Energy

 12. Pipelines and wells’ monitoring 

Internet of Things sensors and RPA software bots can monitor and report the health status of pipelines and wells. Variables such as heat, vibration, and isolation can be factored in a while determining whether maintenance needs to be done. 

Solid infrastructure can lead to shorter production lead times.

Learn more about top 7 technologies in the oil and gas industry.

For more on RPA & IoT

To learn more about the different use cases of IoT and RPA technologies, read:

• 30+ IoT Applications & Use Cases
• Top 100+ RPA Use Cases/Projects/Examples

And if you’t want to invest in either of these technologies, head over to our data-driven lists of:

• RPA vendors
• IoT providers

We will help you through out the selection process:

External Links

• 1. “Product Classification.” FDA. November 28, 2022. Retrieved on December 2, 2022.