The necessity for hardware companies to embrace software solutions into their portfolio as Edge AI continues to grow and proliferate across applications was an interesting topic discussed at Advantech’s Edge Computing Summit held in Munich, on the 17th June.
The Summit brought together industry leaders, innovators and close partners of Advantech as the event tackled the area of Edge AI and Edge computing, and as speakers throughout the day revealed, it is no easy task to integrate Edge AI into hardware.
The increased performance of compute and more powerful and efficient processors has supported shifting workloads to the Edge of devices, and AI has been applied to enhance decision-making while reducing latency.
As Satyajit Sinha, Principal Analyst at IoT Analytics acknowledged in his talk on the evolution of Edge AI, technology architecture has fundamentally changed – attributed to an explosion in IoT connections that began in 2010.
Edge AI was covered from every angle and application during the course of the day; Miller Chang, President at Advantech spoke about how Edge AI and robotics combined can create more value, while Eric Mazzoleni, Vice President, Industrial and Embedded IoT Sales Europe at Qualcomm took a wider view and discussed how the company’s aim is to enable the widest range of applications.
Meanwhile Robert Thompson, Director of Secure Connected Edge Ecosystem at NXP Semiconductors referred to how Edge AI is powering industrial intelligence, being that it was in the “core” of the company’s capabilities, servicing the industrial sector among others including automotive, mobile payments, and communications.
In the afternoon of the event, which split into two tracks covering Edge AI and autonomous systems and robots, in the first track Alexander Fritsch, Senior Product Sales Manager at Advantech Europe spoke about Edge AI solutions, covering computing power, the importance of not thinking about hardware and software separately and making it scalable, among other things.
In the second track, Stefan Doerr-Laukien, CEO and Co-Founder of NODE Robotics discussed the company’s mission in making mobile robots easier to use, addressing an existing barrier, drawing on experience of supporting 30 robot types with its modular software solution and 1,400 robots in production.
Overall, the day offered the chance to exchange discussions and share insights on Edge AI, which as a technology is booming in popularity, but as the event revealed, can be challenging to integrate into devices and integrations.
Keep an eye out for more in-depth write-ups on the talks presented there.
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