Robotnik has a very long track record of participations in EU research projects. Since 2004 we are collaborating with different institutions and companies on the development of state-of-the-art robotic platforms for many different applications, such as border surveillance, firefighting, tunnel inspection or swarming behaviours.
The last EU research project, started on July 2018 and with a total duration of 36 months, means a new challenge for the company, since it is based on a joint collaboration between the European Commission and the Korean government (Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, MSIP). Under such collaboration both European and Korean institutions and companies are taking part on a project called DECENTER: Decentralised technologies for orchestrated cloud-to-edge intelligence.
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 centres; 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, requiring the cooperation of multiple parties. To address these challenges, DECENTER aims to realise a robust Fog Computing platform, 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-border 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. The project will follow a lean implementation methodology and validate its concept with real-world pilots executed in urban, industrial and home environments.
Within DECENTER, Robotnik will develop a logistic use case, that will test a new, cost-effective, robotic indoor transport solution that will be specially suited for warehouses and will automate the transport process and free workforce for tasks that entail higher added value. To this end, the use case will permit the incorporation of a swarm of RB1-BASE robots into the cloud/edge system services, allowing enhancing its functionality by the use of Edge Computing and a centralized Cloud.