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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DECENTER (Decentralised technologies for orchestrated cloud-to-edge intelligence)

Teaser

Summary

The emerging spring of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will enable innovative applications exploiting the myriad of connected sensors and appliances embedded in every corner of modern life. Currently, AI requires high computational resources only available in high-performance data centers; therefore, realizing an architecture capable of securely processing this unprecedented amount of remotely sensed and potentially sensitive data, as well as conveying timely responses to pervasive configurable actuators, is a non-trivial endeavour that requires the cooperation of multiple parties.

To address these challenges, DECENTER aims to realise a robust Fog Computing ecosystem, covering the whole Cloud-to-Things Continuum, that will provide AI application-aware orchestration and provisioning of resources. The project will enrich existing Cloud and IoT solutions with advanced capabilities to abstract features and process data closer to where it is produced. DECENTER will enable a collaborative environment in which multiple stakeholders (Cloud and IoT providers) can securely share and harmoniously manage resources, in dynamically created multi-cloud/edge, federated environments. Cross-domain infrastructure federation will be realized via Blockchain-based Smart Contracts defining customized Service Level Agreements, used to commit the execution of verified workloads across multiple, potentially remote, administrative domains. Through such novelties, DECENTER will unlock the potential of innovative decentralised AI algorithms and models, by deploying them across multiple tiers of the infrastructure and federated clouds. DECENTER will also offer additional services to facilitate the creation, deployment and operation of distributed AI applications. Tools will support the partitioning and distribution of AI models, the creation of digital twins representing the scenario under analysis, the virtualisation of AI applications, the management of data and the enforcement of privacy and trust. The core innovations of the project are shown in Figure 1.

A successful DECENTER will pave the way to the introduction of novel services for the civil society and for the general public. For instance, it will allow municipalities to deploy real-time AI applications protecting the safety of citizens in public spaces (e.g. crossings) by detecting dangerous situations and triggering immediate alarms. DECENTER can offer outstanding benefits in other scenarios such as construction sites, logistics and homes, which are, together with the smart city, the four real-world pilots through which the project will validate its concept and approach.

Work performed

In the first year of activity DECENTER initiated the elaboration of the use cases with the purpose of defining technical requirements for the research, development and piloting activities. Given such requirements, the project looked at the resources that can be available in a heterogeneous and highly distributed environment, with the aim of defining abstractions and models that can be employed to exploit the potential offered by novel IoT and computing technologies.

The DECENTER solution is divided into three layers: the infrastructure layer at the bottom, managed by the platform layer, which is finally complemented by an application service layer that offers added-value tools to support AI applications and developers.

At the platform layer, the project defined the architecture of a framework including a fog computing platform to compose application deployment requests, orchestrate workloads and provide zero-touch provisioning. A brokerage platform offers the capability of automatically federating resources from third parties infrastructures. An Ethereum Blockchain is used to host the negotiation and to seal the contract among the parties. These platforms have been designed and implemented, with their initial functionalities ready to be demonstrated. The study on the algorithms for the selection of third party resources and for the workload orchestration is still in a early stage.

On the AI side, and concerning the services offered by DECENTER, the project initiated the investigation of methods to partition AI models so to enable their deployment in a decentralised environment. Concerns related to the management of data were addressed, especially in the context of cross-domain activities, in which the inherent trust offered by blockchains can help. AI applications can benefit from other essential services: DECENTER designed a data model for digital twins and proposed to reuse the data brokerage capabilities of IoT platforms to enhance such digital representation with both sensor data and AI elaborations. Other DECENTER services offer basic tools to create containerized AI applications.

The outcomes of the first year of work have been disseminated in international journals and conferences (15 publications), and communicated through the project\'s website and social networks. The ethics aspects concerning the demonstration of the use cases have also been analysed.

Final results

There are different aspects in which the DECENTER project is advancing state of the art technologies, but, for the sake of brevity, the blockchain-based fog resource sharing, the AI model partitioning for decentralised execution and the integration of IoT and digital twins for distributing and elaborating a virtual scenario, based on data from AI and sensors, are three relevant achievements of the first reporting period.

DECENTER project is targeting substantial impact from the following angles:
- Technological impact of the DECENTER results for the European and Korean cloud and IoT ecosystems: DECENTER introduces key innovations that provide added-value over Cloud-to-Edge platforms existing in the market. Industry and Research Community will be able to take advantage of DECENTER innovations and knowledge, that will foster the evolution of the technologies developed within the project. DECENTER Consortium will encourage partners on disseminating the project knowledge among the Scientific Community to foster the research on the technologies involved in the project.
- Business and industrial impact on European and Korean competitiveness: The innovative solution provided by DECENTER will generate new business opportunities for its stakeholders, who will be able to deliver new products or improve their existing ones with a competitive advantage over their competitors. DECENTER consortium will promote the project outcomes among industry, particularly among SMEs working in Cloud, Edge, IoT and AI domains.
- Societal impacts for the future smarter life: The development of the technologies involved in DECENTER will have a huge positive impact on society. New products and services will arise to help citizens and eScience community and increase their quality of life. DECENTER Consortium has chosen use cases closely related to help people in their daily lives, so will focus on showcasing the use cases outcomes and benefits for society.