Before we go any further, let's try to establish what most people understand by IoT and what smart objects are.

An IoT device is meant to use the internet as something integral for its behavior. Examples include remote controlled lights, any appliance that you can interact with over an API (such as lights, ovens, thermostats, coffee makers, and so on) even if it is only for reading data, such as an umbrella that glows when there is a rain forecast, or writing it, such as a simple weather station. For all those systems, the internet is an integral part of the concept.

On the other hand, a smart object is something that is designed to work in isolation. This can still include many complex components, such as machine learning and computer vision. A self-driving robot that navigates a maze or smart curtains that open when there is sunlight are both quite autonomous. A device that you show a photo of a dog to and tells you the breed also falls into this category (and yes, that is one of the official demos of Android Things). All these examples are smart, but they do not need the internet, so I like to call them just smart devices and, yes, we can build those with Android Things too.