AI-SPRINT - New EU research initiative set to drive innovation for Artificial Intelligence applications in cloud and edge environments

Image Courtesy of the AI-SPRINT project

Artificial intelligence (AI) is fast becoming a key driver of economic development, playing a major role in shaping global competitiveness and productivity over the next years. 
With the ever-increasing development of AI applications such as intelligent personal assistants, video/audio surveillance, smart cities’ applications, autonomous driving and Industry 4.0, comes also a growing need to optimise the use of computational resources for data collection, processing, and online analytics, while at the same time preserving data privacy and increasing the security of data.

AI-SPRINT “Artificial intelligence in Secure Privacy-preserving computing continuum” is poised to develop a novel framework for developing and operating AI applications, together with their data, exploiting computing continuum environments. Key outputs include novel tools for AI applications development, secure execution, easy deployment, as well as runtime management and optimisation, which will help to overcome current technological challenges in exploiting resources in the edge-to-cloud continuum in terms of flexibility, scalability of analytics, interoperability, energy efficiency, security and privacy.
By doing so, AI-SPRINT will meet the digitisation needs of businesses and the public sector proving its competitive edge and replicability in three real-world scenarios, spanning farming 4.0, maintenance and inspection and personalised healthcare in line with EU priority areas for AI investments.
But it doesn’t stop here. A dedicated AI-SPRINT Alliance will be set up to engage with small Software houses and EU cloud providers to support the AI and edge computing ecosystem. Alliance Members will reap tangible benefits from AI-SPRINT with the opportunity to join its planned Acceleration Club (A3C), where they could use the AI-SPRINT design tools and runtime environment to provide advanced design solutions hosted in their platform and extend application deployment and resource management from their internal cloud to edge servers and AI-enabled sensors or end-user devices, optimising the seamless execution of application across the computing continuum while also minimising energy consumption.

About AI-SPRINT

AI-SPRINT is a Research and Innovation Action co-funded by the European Commission, H2020 Programme, under Grant Agreement 101016577.
The Consortium brings together 11 domain-skilled partners from 6 European Countries: Italy (Politecnico di Milano - Coordinator, Trust-IT Services Srl, IDC Italia), Spain (Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Universitat Politecnica de Valencia), Germany (Technische Universitaet Dresden, Cloud & Heat Technologies GmBH), France (Gregoire), Romania (Beck et Al Services Srl) and Poland (Air Fusion Spółka Z Ograniczoną Odpowiedzialnością and 7bulls.com Spółka Z Ograniczoną Odpowiedzialnością), with SMEs and researchers combining their expertise in the cloud continuum.