Artificial Intelligence-of-Things (AIoT): Opportunities, Challenges, and Solutions

Background and Motivation:

From smart home, smart city to smart globe, Internet of Things (IoT) is playing a great role that will dramatically change not only our daily lives but human civilization. However, with numerous flows of data streamed from connected sensors and devices that are increasing by billion per year, the ability to handle data in a timely, effective manner will determine whether we can fully enjoy the benefits of IoT. The recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have brought opportunities in overcoming the challenges of IoT development. Consequently, the integration of AI and IoT technologies becomes a promising trend to promote the benign evolution of the IoT ecosystem.

Recently, a new IoT structure known as the Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) comes into play. Broadly speaking, AIoT is a fusion of AI and IoT in practical applications. However, AIoT is not a simple AI + IoT, but adopts technologies such as AI and the IoT, supported by big data and cloud computing, using semiconductors as algorithm carriers, network security technologies as implementation guarantees, and 5G as a catalyst to integrate data, knowledge, and intelligence. AIoT aims to realize the dataization of all things and the intelligentization of everything. It applies intelligence to the edge and gives devices the ability to understand the data, observe the environment around them, and decide what to do best. With the power of AI, IoT devices are not just messengers feeding information to the control center, but have evolved into intelligent machines capable of performing self-driven analytics and acting independently. AIoT disruptive changes and unique opportunities to modern society through personalized services, tailored content, improved availability and accessibility, and cost-effective delivery.

Although the advent of AIoT has spawned a large number of new technologies and applications, the convergence of IoT and AI also poses several emerging research challenges. To fulfill AIoT, one essential step is to connect various things in a collaborative manner because IoT devices appear in a wide variety of products. Because AIoT is so huge, it would have to be self-organized and groups of things in the AIoT should collaborate for a common goal. However, simply connecting them without further collaboration among different things leads to unnecessary energy consumption, uncertain security, unstable performance, etc., for AIoT. Another essential step is to link AIoT with other advanced technologies causing convergence and breaking down the barriers. For example, the training of AI demands huge computation and memory resources, the training process is preferred to be done in cloud. How to effectively combine AIoT with 5G, cloud computing, and blockchain, etc., calls for extensive attention from both academia and industry. However, the link among cloud, edge, blockchain, and AIoT, etc., poses many challenges that call for advanced approaches and rethinking of the entire architecture, communication, and processing to meet requirements in latency, reliability, and so on. The purpose of this special issue is to provide the academic and industrial communities a venue covering all aspects of state-of-the-art advanced approaches, methods, and systems at the crossing of AI and IoT, to advance their joint applications.

Technical Scope of the Proposal:

This special issue focuses on the crossroads among scientists, industry practitioners, and researchers from the domains in IoT, AI, industrial internet, deep learning, 5G, edge computing, cloud computing, blockchain, etc. This special issue will cover comprehensively advanced algorithms, frameworks, and technologies for AIoT. Technical scope of the proposal includes, but not limited to:

• Situation and intention awareness for AIoT
• Collaboration for communication in AIoT
• AI-enabled IoT operation and maintenance
• Machine learning for IoT system deployment and operation
• Simulation tools, methodologies, and performance evaluations for AIoT
• Novel network and communication protocol for AIoT
• Distributed large scale systems and framework for AIoT
• Reliability, security, privacy, and trust in AIoT
• Industrial big data process and application for AIoT
• AIoT approaches for intelligent transportation systems
• AIoT approaches for smart home/city/healthcare/grid
• Intelligent resource management models and solutions for AIoT
• Intelligent sensing and network communication for AIoT
• Intelligent edge/cloud computing for AIoT
• Novel frameworks/algorithms/applications that combining AI with IoT

Important Date:

Submissions Deadline: March 1, 2021

First Reviews Due: May 1, 2021

Revision Due: June 15, 2021

Acceptance Notification: July 15, 2021

Final Manuscript Due: August 31, 2021

Publication Date: 2021

Guest Editors

• Wei Wei (IEEE Senior Member), Xi’an University of Technology, China
  Email: weiwei@xaut.edu.cn
• Vincenzo Piuri (IEEE Fellow), Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
  Email: vincenzo.piuri@unimi.it
• Witold Pedrycz (IEEE Fellow), University of Alberta, Canada
  Email: wpedrycz@ualberta.ca
• Syed Hassan Ahmed (IEEE Senior Member), JMA Wireless, USA
  Email: sh.ahmed@ieee.org

Submission instructions:

The submission system will be open for submissions to our Special Issue from September 15, 2020. When submitting your manuscript please select the article type “VSI: AIOT“. Please submit your manuscript before March 01, 2021. Please ensure you read the Guide for Authors before writing your manuscript <https://www.elsevier.com/journals/future-generation-computer-systems/0167-739x/guide-for-authors >. The Guide for Authors and the link to submit your manuscript is available on the Journal’s homepage. Each manuscript can have no more than 14 pages (plus one page after revision) in double-column format, including all its content (e.g., figures, references, appendix, and so on).

All submissions deemed suitable to be sent for peer review will be reviewed by at least two independent reviewers on the basis of relevance for the Special Issue, novelty/originality, significance, technical quality and correctness, quality and clarity of presentation, quality of references and reproducibility. The editors reserve the right to reject without review any submissions deemed to be outside the scope of the Special Issue. Authors are welcome to contact the Special Issue editors with questions about scope before preparing a submission. Once your manuscript is accepted, it will go into production, and will be published in the current regular issue and pulled into the online Special Issue. Articles from this Special Issue will appear in different regular issues of the journal, though they will be clearly marked and branded as Special Issue articles.