This Chinese lab is researching how to ensure your driverless car or robo-surgeon does not hang

The global market for fog computing is expected to reach US$18.2 billion by 2022 as demand for devices that support this technology takes off

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An exhibitor demonstrates a Chinese-made industrial robot to visitors at the World Robot Conference in Beijing. Photo: AP

Published: 6:03am, 11 Apr 2018Updated: 7:10am, 11 Apr 2018

The last thing you want when riding in a driverless car or being operated on by a robot surgeon is for these futuristic machines to hang. Yet that could be a problem in the future if such hi-tech innovations become everyday objects, resulting in an exponential surge of data.

To tackle that problem, a group of researchers at the Shanghai Institute of Fog Computing Technology (SHIFT) – billed as the world’s first lab dedicated to the technology – are finding ways to speed up data transmission by enabling devices to communicate with each other locally, rather than route that conversation through a centralised cloud.

Forget the trade war, China wants to win the computing arms race

“Sending data from all the devices we have today to the cloud is very resource-consuming. It takes up a lot of bandwidth, which could delay data transmission,” Yang Yang, co-director of SHIFT, said in an interview. “But if we can take care of most of the requests locally by fog computing, this can reduce the burden on cloud and improve efficiency altogether.”

Established in April last year, SHIFT represents another example of China’s investments into advanced sciences including artificial intelligence and quantum computing, part of a strategic push to ensure it is not left behind in a global technological race.

Recent studies show that fog computing is poised for steady growth over the next few years. The global fog computing market is forecast to reach US$18.2 billion in 2022, up from an estimated US$1 billion this year, according to a 451 Research report.