EMPYREAN project: Trustworthy, Cognitive And AI-Driven Collaborative Associations of IoT Devices and Edge Resources for Data Processing

We usually view the IoT-edge-cloud continuum as a monolithic pipeline where anyone can use any kind of resources. Though this may be a viable scientific assumption, it cannot realistically be applied towards the realization of one of the key strategic targets of the EU Digital Decade that involves “10,000 climate neutral highly secure edge nodes to be deployed in the EU”. In practice, multiple organizations or individuals own and use IoT devices or robots with on-device local processing, edge computing and storage resources and cloud computing infrastructures. As a result, edge resources are currently fragmented and in many cases, underutilized while separate from any cloud and of any market.

EMPYREAN envisages a new paradigm for the organization of the continuum, based on the creation of collaborative collectives of IoT devices, robots and resources spanning from the edge to the cloud. EMPYREAN calls this the Association-based continuum, in the sense that multiple Associations (collaborative collectives of IoT devices, robots, and resources) operate in parallel in space and time and constitute the IoT-edge-cloud continuum. An Association comprises of shared and aggregated edge computing and storage resources of various sizes and characteristics.

In particular, EMPYREAN’s Associations: 

• Supports organizations in building a collaborative IoT-edge-cloud continuum utilizing self-owned resources.
• Enables an Association to scale through the participation of multiple users/organizations and the sharing of resources between them.
• Abstracts the complexity and the dynamicity of the underlying infrastructures that usually belong to different administrative domains.
• Overcomes the current isolation and underutilization of edge resources.
• Promotes the idea that the cloud may not always be available or its use may be prohibited for various reasons, in which case the IoT-edge continuum built must be self-sufficient.
• Supports inter-Association cooperation, enabling the use of resources from different Associations.

It is clear, that EMPYREAN’s Associations do not propose a greenfield-like change in our domain, but rather a new and viable way to organize existing and future resources in a brownfield manner, thereby building the IoT-edge-cloud continuum as an Association-based continuum. In this continuum, key stakeholders include: (i) infrastructure providers, (ii) service providers, (iii) application developers and (iv) end users. EMPYREAN serves as a bridge between infrastructure and service providers (the supply side) and application developers and end users (the demand side) who require high-performing, low-latency, hyper-distributed applications. EMPYREAN is dedicated in achieving the optimal balance between maximizing resource utilization and collaboration and ensuring the highest quality of service and experience.