Data management, communication systems and the edge: Challenges for the future of transportation

Other text in scientific journal, 2021

Edge cloud systems have emerged as a new promising alternative to address the needs of many emerging latency-critical applications
such as autonomous vehicles. These applications are ill-suited for traditional clouds due to the end-to-end latency and the limited bandwidth between the cloud's (few) data centers and these applications.
In the edge cloud model, a myriad of small-scale computing clusters are brought next to the applications at the edge of the network. Many Applications
in transportation engineering such as autonomous vehicle collision avoidance, and fleet management, requiring more global decision making for safety and correctness of operation, can thus make use of edge cloud systems, offloading their computations to these edge clusters.
The edge can then analyze data from these vehicles to optimize the traffic flow, reduce accidents, and provide transportation systems with more
autonomy. The idea of edge computing today forms a cornerstone in the design of many future systems, including, 5G networks and autonomous
vehicles, among many others.