Cars that drive themselves, phones that find empty parking meters, and wind turbines that talk to one another.

These are all possibilities in the near future under what is known as the Internet of Things.

So what is the Internet of Things?

It doesn't have so much to do with the Internet that we know, which we typically use to search for news, connect with friends and shop online.

Rather, the Internet of Things describes a future where devices, ranging from our phones and kitchen appliances to wind turbines and cars, are all wirelessly networked and able to collect and share data with one another and ourselves.

The results will be a world where our machines do more work than ever for us. It will be a time when our phones might sense when we may be getting sick, and our cars talk with one another to warn of potential accidents.

And factories will be able to identify manufacturing problems well in advance and re-design and make new parts needed for an assembly line before a human even notices anything wrong, preventing the need for downtime or production delays that can cost industrial companies millions of dollars a day.

Stacy Patterson, a computer science professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, has been researching the use of networked sensors in cars that would allow them to "share" information on road conditions and other inputs like weather to create so-called "data maps" that would improve the ability of drivers to avoid accidents. She said the concept is part of an evolution of automobile technology toward the driverless car that is currently being studied by Google and others in real-life testing.

"It's going to happen," Patterson said. "We're right at the beginning of some really cool stuff."

That's why the Capital Region's largest high-tech companies are talking constantly about the Internet of Things, which is also known as the industrial Internet.

Thomas Caulfield, the general manager of GlobalFoundries' Fab 8 computer chip factory, says that the Internet of Things is behind much of the push for smaller, faster, more powerful chips.

At an industry conference last month at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Albany, Caulfield said that Google's $3.2 billion purchase of Nest Labs in 2014 showed the power of the Internet of Things. Nest makes Wi-Fi enabled thermostats that program themselves using sensors and "learning" a homeowner's preferences.

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