Edge Computing has been finding applications in diverse industries. But two of the fastest adopters have been automotive and industrial manufacturing.
A modern car is supposed to do more last mile computing than a fighter jet. When you add vehicle autonomy, the need for instantaneous response based on external stimuli increases manifold. ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) gathers inputs from both outside the vehicle and inside the vehicle to proactively assist the driver. Edge Computing can enable the car to do a lot of these actions without depending on bandwidth, connectivity, or latency of a pureplay cloud system.
Manufacturing environments generate volumes of data every second. While some of this information can be processes in the cloud, there are stimuli that needs one-the-fly analysis and response. This helps automate actions that drive efficiency and operator safety. For instance, operator fatigue alerts or shaft deviations in a rotating equipment will need almost instantaneous actions. Edge computing can use the network edge computational bandwidth to predict and respond.