IoT for Defense and National Security

9AI at the Edge: Challenges, Applications, and Directions

Dhiraj Joshi¹, Nirmit Desai¹, Shyama Prosad Chowdhury³, Wei‐Han Lee¹, Luis Bathen², Shiqiang Wang¹, and Dinesh Verma¹

¹IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, USA

²IBM Research – Almaden, IBM, San Jose, CA, USA

³IBM GBS, IBM India, Kolkata, WB, India

Abstract

Robotic devices have several applications in commercial and defense IoT establishments. However, robots may not always have the capacity to run complex AI based applications, and high speed connectivity to exploit applications in cloud or data centers may not always be present. This situation arises in both defense and commercial contexts, with defense environments lacking sufficient network stability, and commercial environments concerned about data privacy and communications costs. The exploitation of AI capabilities at the edge can enable many use‐cases by bypassing issues with network connectivity. At IBM Research, we have been developing Distributed AI technology and working on several IoT use cases using a robotic dog to enable applications such as visual and thermal inspections to identify anomalous conditions in industrial assets. In this chapter, we will lay out those use‐cases, and discuss key Distributed AI components that enable such IoT applications, and how a robotic environment allows for new capabilities such as re‐positioning a robotic sensor for optimal sensing. We will also discuss relevance of the use‐cases to a military ...