ETSI - LF - OCP - MEC Hackathon 2023

ETSI/LF Edge/OCP

Edge AI Hackathon 2023

Organization and scope

Details

• Driven by ETSI ISG MEC, LF Edge Akraino and OCP
• Final Phase hosted at OCP Global Summit in San Jose, California

Teams are challenged to design & prototype an Edge-Native solution, focusing on the use of AI and considering overall application performance optimization in three application verticals categories:

•AI and Automation:  How to utilize edge-native and AI into data analytics and automation?

•Sustainability:  How is edge-native and AI useful to enhance sustainability in applications, services, and networks?

•5G Edge: How to deploy and utilize AI in 5G edge infrastructure to enable edge-native distributed applications?

The Edge AI Hackathon 2023 was run remotely from 1st July to 18 october 2023 with a short-list of best teams invited to complete with demonstrations and a Hackathon “pitch-off” at the OCP Global Summit in San Jose, California

• Edge Computing provides developers with localized, low-latency resources that can be utilized to create new and innovative solutions, which are essential to many application vertical markets in the 5G era.

• ETSI’s ISG MEC is standardizing an open environment that enables the integration of applications from infrastructure and edge service providers across MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing) platforms and systems.

• LF Edge’s Akraino project offers a set of open infrastructure and application Blueprints for Edge, spanning a broad variety of application vertical use-cases. Each blueprint offers a high-quality full-stack solution that is tested and validated , that are validated by the community.

• The purpose of this Hackathon was to demonstrate an innovative Edge Application or Solution focused on the following application vertical use-cases with supporting ETSI MEC Service APIs and LF Edge Akraino Blueprint resources:
  • Automotive: Realize a vehicular use case or service to enable intelligent traffic control, driving capabilities, increased safety, etc.
  • Mixed and Augmented Reality: Realize an immersive application enabling interactivity of physical systems and human experiences.
  • Edge Computing and 5G: Deploy and use 5G and hybrid edge infrastructure to enable federation for distributed edge applications

However, teams were also encouraged to be creative and propose to develop solutions in other application verticals than these highlighted.

Supporting organizations

Hackathon phases:

• Call for developers: 29 June
• Hackathon start - Remote Competition: 17 July
• Team Final Submission - remote competition: 15 Sept
• Short-list teams announced: 25 Sept
• Onsite competition: 18 Oct
• Winners: On-site Hackathon Demos and “Pitch-off”: The three best teams were invited to demonstrate their solutions at the OCP Global Summit event in San Jose, Silicon Valley on October 18th. The winning team was selected following the “pitch-off” and announced at the conference.

• Prizes :
  • Exposure at the OCP Global Summit – 3 best teams
  • Travel expensed to San Jose - ~$2,000 per team
  • Cash Prizes:
    • First place - $3000
    • Second place - $2000
    • Third place - $1000

Resources

ETSI MEC resources

• Suggested ETSI MEC Services and APIs:
  • MEC011 - MEC Platform Application & Service Enablement (Mp1)
  • MEC012- Radio Network Information Service (RNIS)
  • MEC013 - Location Service
  • MEC021 - Application Mobility Service (AMS)
  • MEC028 - WLAN Access Information Service (WAIS)
  • MEC030 – V2X Information Service (VIS)
• ETSI Forge:
  • OpenAPI representations for the all the MEC Service APIs; implementation ready (forge.etsi.org/rep/mec)
• ETSI MEC Sandbox:
  • Experimentation Environment for MEC Service APIs (try-mec.etsi.org)

LF Edge - Akraino Blueprints

Developers encouraged to use other Blueprints of their choosing

Automotive	1.MEC-based Stable Topology Prediction for Vehicular Networks
Mixed and Augmented Reality	2.Virtual Classroom (Integrated Edge Cloud Type 4)
Edge Computing and 5G	3.Integrated Cloud Native NFV/App Stack 4.Public Cloud Edge Interface (PCEI) 5.Enterprise Applications on Lightweight 5G Telco Edge (EALTE)

Additional resources

• Equinix offered teams access to their Metal Platform (metal.equinix.com)
• Intel offered teams access and technical support for their Smart Edge Open Toolkit (smart-edge-open-overview)

Awarded projects

Podium

15 Teams from Europe, US and Asia have participated to this exciting hackathon, submitting high-quality and innovative projects.

Big Thanks to all of them.

The Jury has reviewed and awarded the following Top projects:

• 1^st Prize : Team "Domino" from Equinix and Aarna Networks
• 2^nd Prize : Team "Pedraforca" from CTTC and Vicomtech
• 3^rd Prize and best Automotive project : Team "K.I.T.T Knowledge In The Traffic" from Optare Solutions

Winner Team

The ETSI/LF MEC Hackathon 2022 winner is the “Domino” team , composed by staff from Equinix and Aarna Networks. They developed a solution called “MEC Service Federation for Location-aware IoT with DevOps MEC Infra Orchestration ”.

Big congratulations from the jury !!!

From Left to right: Vivekanandan Muthukrishnan, Bob Gazda (Jury) , Oleg Berzin

In the solution they used Akraino Public Cloud Edge Interface (PCEI) blueprint and MEC Location API service to demonstrate orchestration of federated MEC infrastructure and services, including:

• Bare metal, interconnection, virtual routing for MEC and Public Cloud IaaS/SaaS, across two operators/providers (a 5G operator and a MEC provider)
• 5G Control and User Plane Functions
• Deployment and operation of end-to-end cloud native IoT application making use of 5G access and distributed both across geographic locations and across hybrid MEC (edge cloud) and Public Cloud (SaaS) infrastructure
• By orchestrating, bare metal servers and their software stack, 5G control plane and user plane functions, interconnection between the 5G provider and MEC provider, connectivity to a public cloud as well as the IoT application and the MEC Location API service, they show how it is possible for providers to enable sharing of their services in a MEC Federation