Francesco D' Andria

The ever-increasing challenges introduced by the heterogeneity of current and envisioned IT technologies and infrastructure draw a highly distributed and heterogeneous picture of the future ecosystems. In this ecosystem, innovative services must be optimally deployed to guarantee the maximum level of quality of service for users. Already known paradigms such as the cloud continuum, that bring together edge and cloud computing, are now expanding horizons towards 6G NTN mobile networks, where non-terrestrial networks seamlessly connect to their terrestrial counterparts leading the way towards infinite compute continuum. Considering the data intensive services and quality requirements demanded, the distribution of the processing execution tasks must be much more optimally designed that it is currently the case. On the infrastructure side, several initiatives are already actively aimed at providing a Meta-OS that may seamlessly manage the different actors (services, infrastructure, and users) under the continuum paradigm. However, many challenges remain open due to the existing limitations, in particular when mapping resources into services and vice-versa. It is in fact this two-way coordination between services and infrastructure that is missing today and is pivotal for optimal performance. On the one hand the upcoming demands coming from the vast extension of the reach of network technologies, such as 6G NTN, which opens up the traditional cloud continuum to a potentially infinite satellites realm, makes it free for customized services to be dynamically created and provisioned. On the other hand, the infrastructure itself may be created based on the services envisioned, in a perfect match between them. This paper is a positioning effort pushing forth the vision of this expandable paradigm of bidirectional and collaborative service-infrastructure provisioning, which we coin as Plastic Computing. The main objective of Plastic Computing is to optimize service performance by molding both the services and infrastructure into a perfect artifact, which is easily moldable and extendable to adopt novel services and IT infrastructure and network paradigms. Finally, two exemplifying case studies are introduced to highlight the envisioned benefits of the novel Plastic Computing paradigm.

The rapid growth in the number of interconnected devices on the Internet (referred to as the Internet of Things—IoT), along with the huge volume of data that are exchanged and processed, has created a new landscape in network design and operation. Due to the limited battery size and computational capabilities of IoT nodes, data processing usually takes place on external devices. Since latency minimization is a key concept in modern-era networks, edge servers that are in close proximity to IoT nodes gather and process related data, while in some cases data offloading in the cloud might have to take place. The interconnection of a vast number of heterogeneous IoT devices with the edge servers and the cloud, where the IoT, edge, and cloud converge to form a computing continuum, is also known as the IoT-edge-cloud (IEC) continuum. Several key challenges are associated with this new computing systems’ architectural approach, including (i) the design of connection and programming protocols aimed at properly manipulating a huge number of heterogeneous devices over diverse infrastructures; (ii) the design of efficient task offloading algorithms aimed at optimizing services execution; (iii) the support for security and privacy enhancements during data transfer to deal with the existent and even unforeseen attacks and threats landscape; (iv) scalability, flexibility, and reliability guarantees to face the expected mobility for IoT systems; and (v) the design of optimal resource allocation mechanisms to make the most out of the available resources. These challenges will become even more significant towards the new era of sixth-generation (6G) networks, which will be based on the integration of various cutting-edge heterogeneous technologies. Therefore, the goal of this survey paper is to present all recent developments in the field of IEC continuum systems, with respect to the aforementioned deployment challenges. In the same context, potential limitations and future challenges are highlighted as well. Finally, indicative use cases are also presented from an IEC continuum perspective.

The rapid growth in the number of interconnected devices on the Internet (referred to as the Internet of Things – IoT), along with the huge volume of data that are exchanged and processed, has created a new landscape in network design and operation. Due to the limited battery size and computational capabilities of IoT nodes, data processing usually takes place on external devices. Since latency minimization is a key concept in modern era networks, edge servers that are in close proximity to IoT nodes gather and process related data, while in some cases data offloading in the cloud might have to take place. The interconnection of a vast number of heterogeneous IoT devices with the edge servers and the cloud, where IoT, edge and cloud converge to form a computing continuum, is also known as IoT-edge-cloud (IEC) continuum. Several key challenges are associated with this new computing systems architectural approach, including: i) design of connection and programming protocols aimed at properly manipulating a huge number of heterogeneous devices over diverse infrastructures; ii) design of efficient task offloading algorithms aimed at optimizing services execution; iii) support for security and privacy enhancements during data transfer to deal with the existent and even unforeseen attacks and threats landscape; iv) scalability, flexibility and reliability guarantees to face the expected mobility for IoT systems, and; v) design of optimal resource allocation mechanisms to make the most out of the available resources. These challenges become even more significant towards the new era of sixth generation (6G) networks, which will be based on the integration of various cutting edge heterogeneous technologies. Therefore, the goal of this survey paper is to present all recent developments in the field of IEC continuum systems, with respect to the aforementioned deployment challenges. In the same context, potential limitations and future challenges are highlighted as well. Finally, indicative use cases are also presented, from an IEC continuum perspective.

Recent advances in the field of Virtual Reality (VR) using Head Mounted Display (HMD) has presented a new medium for immersive experiences. Designing for this medium does have its challenges, and designers and developers must adopt new design processes and pipeline for creating and manipulating virtual spaces in VR. There have been several works of research within similar fields of 3D manipulation with an HMD, but recent technological strides demand new efforts to translate prior knowledge toward the development of new and innovative tools. In this paper, we propose the design and implementation of a web-based authoring tool that exploits VR technology in the creation of the virtual spaces using an immersive Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE). The purpose is a multi-user collaboration platform for the web browser adaptable to a wide variety of cases and purposes and which allows multiple and dissimilar stakeholders to create and manipulate virtual spaces in collaboration, either recreate real-world scenes or construct new digital environments using their imagination.