Swarms projects workshop in Brussels
On September 5, 2024, several members of the EUCloudEdgeIoT community met for a workshop organized by the European Commission to discuss results of the Swarm Intelligence cluster of projects, namely INCODE, TaRDIS, OASEES, OpenSwarm and SMARTEDGE.
SmartEdge contributed by showcasing its innovative use of swarm intelligence in three key areas: traffic management, smart factories and standardization.
Traffic management
Kari Koskinen from Conveqs Oy presented the use of swarm intelligence in traffic management, which is currently being tested in the Jätkäsaari area in Finland. Key technological innovations include the semantic representation of traffic environments, sharing information between vehicles and infrastructure, establishing two-way communication between infrastructure and road users, and hardware acceleration. Potential economic benefits include better traffic flow, enhanced safety, and improved decision-making for policymakers and road users.
It is estimated that:
- IoT solutions in centralized and adaptive traffic control could generate between €100 and €390 billion in socio-economic impact by 2030.
- Autonomous vehicles could capture between €240 and €300 billion in value during the same period.
- Connected vehicles and swarm solutions are crucial for IoT-based traffic systems, with isolation in current systems being a key challenge. The greatest benefits come from cooperative systems that share data and resources.
Smart factories
David Bowden, from Dell Technologies, presented the use case of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) in smart factories. The use of swarms in smart factories allows for smaller, more flexible local production, a larger range of products, and smaller batch sizes. SmartEdge technology supports various types of swarms: statically bound swarms, goal-oriented dynamic swarms, and device-oriented dynamic swarms. David further discussed the advantages of AMRs compared to Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs), emphasizing:
- The formation of swarms of AMRs that collaborate to achieve common goals.
- The use of semantic integration for intra-swarm communication.
- The application of semantic SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) for better understanding of the environment.
Standardization
Finally, on the standardization side, François Daoust (W3C/ERCIM) presented “Chunks and Rules for Cognitive Control,” highlighting a cognitive approach to low-code development. This method uses facts and rules to model real-time, event-driven actions via APIs. Supported by the W3C Chunks & Rules specification and a JavaScript library, it extends to distributed agents like swarms using asynchronous messaging.