Edge Robotics Experimentation over Next Generation IIoT Testbeds

Abstract

The emergence of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) requires the interconnection between robots, sensors, and the underlying network and computing infrastructure. Edge Robotics has emerged as a flexible paradigm that enables resource-constrained mobile robots to offload computationally intensive tasks of time/mission-critical applications. In this context, Edge Computing is essential for providing additional resources towards confronting the stringent performance specifications. This article presents the architectural concepts and capabilities of the NETMODE testbed, member of the Fed4FIRE+ federation, for the state-of-the-art experimentation with robotic applications. An evaluation of the proposed architecture is conducted using a SLAM algorithm which is a compute-intensive application.