## 6 Key Challenges and Future Directions
### Role of WebAssembly in Advancing IoT
* **Futuristic Scope*
* Proposed enhancements to Wasm, such as the addition of garbage collection and the WASI, could offer additional security benefits. Garbage collection can help prevent memory leaks, which can sometimes be exploited to carry out attacks, while WASI could provide a more secure way for Wasm modules to interact with system resources. * **Enabling Advanced Features in IoT*
* Wasm's efficient execution can enable more advanced features in IoT devices, including edge computing, real-time analytics, and machine learning. As Wasm continues to evolve and improve, it can be expected that these capabilities will be further enhanced. Wasm's potential extends beyond the immediate benefits of performance and security. Its flexibility and portability open doors to new possibilities for the advancement of IoT applications. This section explores how Wasm can enable more advanced features in the IoT realm. * **Edge AI and Machine Learning*
* The high performance of Wasm enables the deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) models directly onto edge devices. This capability allows IoT devices to make intelligent decisions in real time without relying on a cloud-based service, thereby reducing latency and bandwidth usage. Additionally, running AI/ML models on-device can offer privacy benefits, as sensitive data no longer need to be transmitted over the network. * **Digital Twins*
* Wasm's cross-platform compatibility can play a significant role in the implementation of digital twins, a concept that involves creating a digital replica of a physical object or system. * **Advanced Augmented Reality (AR)*
* Wasm can power more advanced AR applications in wearable IoT devices such as smart glasses. Its efficiency and performance can enable complex AR tasks such as object recognition or positional tracking to be performed directly on the device, offering a more responsive and immersive user experience. * **Ubiquitous Computing*
* Wasm's portability and efficient performance make it a promising technology for ubiquitous computing, a concept in which computing is embedded in everyday objects and activities. With Wasm, developers can write code once and run it on a multitude of devices, facilitating the integration of computing into peoples' daily lives. * **Standardization of IoT Development*
* The language-neutral and platform-agnostic nature of Wasm could contribute to standardization in IoT development, reducing fragmentation and simplifying the development process across various platforms and devices. The IoT landscape is inherently diverse and fragmented, with a multitude of different devices, platforms, and technologies. This fragmentation can often be a barrier to the widespread adoption and development of IoT applications. Here, Wasm's platform-agnostic nature and standardization can provide a unifying layer to facilitate the standardization of IoT development. * **Unifying the Development Process*
* Wasm offers a single uniform target for all IoT developers. Its universal bytecode can be executed on any device that has a Wasm runtime, regardless of the underlying hardware or operating system. This universality simplifies the development process, as developers no longer need to build different versions of the same application for different platforms; instead, they can focus on building one version that can run across all platforms. * **Facilitating Code Reuse*
* The ability to write code once and run it anywhere encourages code reuse. In traditional IoT development, code often needs to be rewritten when moving from one platform to another due to differences in APIs, operating systems, or hardware capabilities. Wasm mitigates this issue, as the same Wasm code can be used across different devices and platforms. * **Ensuring Predictable Performance*
* Wasm's low-level nature ensures that it offers predictable performance across platforms. Its compact binary format is designed for fast download, parsing, and execution.