On 16 June 2025, the CoGNETs project joined a dynamic gathering of advanced research initiatives at the 31st International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE/IEEE ITMC) (16-19 June 2025) in Valencia, Spain, themed “AI-driven Industrial Transformation: Digital Leadership in Technology, Engineering, Innovation & Entrepreneurship”. The occasion was a Special Session SS14: Cognitive Computing Continuum, a fitting convergence of seven Horizon Europe projects exploring how intelligence can flow seamlessly from cloud to edge in distributed environments.
Represented by Fernando López Aguilar (FIWARE), CoGNETs contributed to an exchange that blended visionary thinking with hands-on progress. Chaired by Usman Wajid and co-chaired by Ioanna Kapetanidou (ENACT), the session brought together perspectives from EMPYREAN, Swarmchestrate, MYRTUS, HYPER-AI, ENACT, and others, each addressing the computing continuum through its own technological lens—from autonomous orchestration to energy-aware deployment and secure multi-layer architectures.
The discussions tackled some of the most pressing challenges in distributed computing today:
- Dynamic discovery and connectivity across heterogeneous edge–cloud resources.
- AI-driven automation and adaptive orchestration for real-time responsiveness.
- Optimised application deployment, balancing performance with energy efficiency.
- Security and privacy safeguards for distributed applications and AI models.
CoGNETs’ contribution centred on how swarm intelligence and cognitive middleware can enable autonomous, efficient, and trustworthy collaboration between IoT, edge, and cloud components—reducing latency, improving resilience, and scaling intelligence across the continuum.
As the Cognitive Computing Continuum vision takes shape, one message resonated: no single project can address it all. Progress comes from the complementarity of diverse approaches, each solving part of a complex puzzle. CoGNETs is proud to be part of this collaborative effort, helping to redefine how distributed intelligence will power the next generation of applications and services.
