A smart object is a thing that carries its own intelligence. Where a tagged pallet depends on a reader to exist in the digital world, a smart object has a microcontroller, memory, a radio and usually some sensing, so it can announce itself, store a history and respond to requests. A smart lock, a connected pill dispenser and a shipping container with a tracking unit are all smart objects.
The term is common in research and standards work, where it emphasizes autonomy and interaction rather than the plumbing. A smart object should expose what it is and what it can do in a form other systems can discover, which is the problem interoperability standards try to solve. In product descriptions the plainer “IoT device” has largely replaced it.
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