Invited Keynotes

From Sky to Cloud: Integrating Drones and IoT in Inland Ports

Talk Description: Inland terminals face the challenge of managing dynamic cargo types and complex stakeholder interactions, necessitating efficient data collection and process optimization. The introduction of cost-effective unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones) combined with IoT technologies presents innovative solutions to these challenges. Drones act as dynamic sensors, autonomously monitoring and collecting data without the need for fixed infrastructure. The InteGreatDrones project leverages drone swarms and IoT to capture terminal activities, integrating computer vision and local data processing to maintain privacy while offering detailed insights. By utilizing a compute continuum that combines edge and cloud resources, the project provides real-time monitoring and advanced analytics to enhance operational efficiency. This keynote will explore the innovative methods and initial results of the InteGreatDrones project, detailing the use of autonomous drones and IoT in creating a digital twin of the port, optimizing routes, and supporting predictive maintenance. Additionally, it will address challenges such as container identification through optical character recognition and the effective management of computational workloads. The presentation will demonstrate how integrating drones and IoT can transform inland terminal operations, enabling informed decision-making and comprehensive monitoring.

Designing IoT-Powered Cities for Efficiency, Playability, Livability and the More-Than-Human

City visions have long fascinated urban planners. An early 20th century example includes the Garden Cities of Ebenezer Howard which envisaged satellite communities surrounding city centre hubs, separated by green spaces. More recently, rapid urbanisation combined with technological advances has shifted the narrative towards a highly instrumented smart city vision that was initially characterized by top-down, technocratic approaches that prioritised efficiency, safety, and control. However, this initial framing often left out the diverse needs of urban residents, including creativity, culture, and social interaction. In response, more bottom-up, human-centered approaches emerged, focusing on creating cities that are not only efficient but also livable and where enjoyment, community, and culture take precedence over pure functionality. Yet, such an anthropocentric view threatens to overlook the importance of the non-human species who live in the city and their green habitats that are important to the well-being of people, too. But can technology somehow reconcile all of these concerns? This keynote will explore different ways in which IoT has been utilized in pursuit of making cities not just smart and efficient, but also playable, livable and fit for the more-than human.

Industry Keynote(s)

IoT Technologies in 6G Cyber-Physical Continuum

The Internet of Things technologies are already today widely embedded in our lives and continue to increase both in adoption and technical capabilities. This development, combined with the capabilities of the future network platforms and fueled by rapid digitalization and AI-powered automation, will result in a fully cyber-physical world where physical things, people, and activities are connected through a digital domain of intelligence and data. This keynote will discuss the role of IoT technologies in enabling applications and services for the cyber-physical continuum, highlight some of the key technical research challenges, and present a new research concept of data-oriented in-network enablers designed to tackle these challenges and push the boundaries of what is possible in IoT.

Sponsor Keynote(s)

AI Interconnect for IoT

In this talk, I will focus on the architectural elements necessary for AI-native networks with a focus on the Internet of Things (IoT) and the envisaged 6G technology. To enable programmability and the creation and deployment of applications, we envisage an architectural framework, the AI Interconnect, designed to provide high-level orchestration and coordination for the edge-cloud continuum, taking user and application intent, communication, network capacity, privacy, security, sustainability, and computing constraints into account. The Interconnect aims to offer messaging and brokering capabilities for the control plane, user plane, and higher-level application elements through Large Language Models (LLMs). The decentralized AI Interconnect is responsible for AI selection, placement, task coordination, communication and routing, and safeguarding ethical operations of the AI with an audit trail. Our research also explores how LLMs can be effectively employed for high-level management and orchestration of the networks and IoT and to offer enhanced security and privacy measures.