Mobility and Automotive

Industry Vertical

Partners

In a nutshell

Two recent megatrends in the automotive industry are electrification and driving automation, resulting in vehicles equipped with significant computing power. These vehicles, however, often experience substantial downtime during which their computing resources are unused.
This use case proposes utilising the idle edge computing power of automated and connected vehicles as a service. By sharing these resources during times when the vehicles are parked, recharging, or otherwise inactive, the computing power can be efficiently utilised for various tasks.
The developed framework will be integrated into the HYPER-AI platform, providing a secure and efficient way to offer vehicle computing power as a service, thus reducing the total cost of ownership for vehicle owners and creating new business opportunities.

Challenge

Modern vehicles, especially those with advanced automation and safety features, come equipped with performant edge computing devices capable of processing neural networks and executing complex computing tasks. Despite this, these vehicles spend a significant amount of time idle, leaving untapped potential for edge computing power. The challenge lies in securely harnessing this idle computing power and making it available as a service without compromising the vehicle's primary functions or security. Additionally, ensuring compatibility across different vehicle models and manufacturers is a significant hurdle that must be addressed.

HYPER-AI Solution

The HYPER-AI platform offers an innovative solution by enabling the computing power of a highly automated and connected demonstrator vehicle to be shared as a service during its downtime. By leveraging the car’s safe and secure cloud connections, advanced middleware for application isolation and hardware independence, and performant edge computing hardware, HYPER-AI will allow otherwise idle computing power to be used for various computational tasks. This will involve executing computation jobs encapsulated in docker-like containers or over ROS-bridges, on the vehicle’s primary computing hardware. The solution will include robust data security and privacy measures to protect sensitive vehicle data and ensure that the primary functions of the vehicle are not compromised.

To address compatibility, the platform will employ standard development operations (DevOps) as well as continuous integration and continuous development (CI/CD) practices, ensuring interoperability and ease of integration across different vehicle models and manufacturers. Deployment strategies will consider variations in network connectivity and the availability of computing power.

Impact

This use case aims to transform idle vehicle computing power into a valuable resource, offering it as a service to various customers. The proposed business model involves a computing power provider contracting with vehicle owners, allowing them to resell their vehicle's computing capacity during charging, parking, or other downtime periods. This arrangement will reduce the total cost of ownership for vehicle owners while the cloud service provider manages the technical solutions for the API, computing task distribution, and allocation.

Project KPIs

Existing prototype demonstrator of a service and an application.
Two example applications for outsourced AI-inference on autonomous vehicles.
Dissemination of results through presentations at two scientific conferences or publications in open journals.

In a nutshell

Challenge

HYPER-AI Solution

Impact

Project KPIs

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