Infrastructure Enabling the Physical AI Revolution

#AI #ML #PhysicalAI #infrastructure #edge #distributed #architecture #wifi #cellular #wireless #networking #communication #futurenetworks #ieee

Special Presentation by Bill McFarland (Ramen Inc., USA)

Hosted by the Future Networks Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (AIML) Working Group

Date/Time: Thursday, 17 July 2025 @ 12:00 UTC

Topic:

Infrastructure Enabling the Physical AI Revolution 

Abstract:

While generative AI’s automation of office work has captured the headlines recently, AI is just as dramatically transforming physical work. This “Physical AI” is being deployed in factories, agricultural facilities, warehouses, health care facilities, and eventually will be deployed in nursing homes and private residences. This paper describes the unique distributed AI architectures required in these environments, and the attendant networking infrastructure to support them. The environments themselves are large and often outdoors, including warehouses, factory floors, storage facilities, lumber yards, ports, and farms. Increasingly the work is performed by intelligent and flexible robotics. The paper demonstrates the need for edge-based AI to meet the required reliability, latency, cost, security, and trust for these applications. Networking topologies typical of these environments are presented, highlighting their uniquely complicated arrangement of hierarchical and parallel systems with periodic touch points, together with cross network utilization models. Evidence is presented that demonstrates that distributed local AI processing, together with hybrid WiFi and cellular networking, are the best solutions to providing the required performance. A case study of an agricultural processing facility is presented to make the concepts concrete.

Speaker:

Bill McFarland is an experienced engineering executive, currently acting as an advisor to several companies in the communications space.  Bill was previously the CTO of Plume Design.  At Plume he led projects in data science, optimization, standards, intellectual property, and regulatory matters.  Bill also served as Vice President of Technology at Qualcomm, and CTO of Atheros Communications.  Bill received a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and a Master’s in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.  Bill holds over 100 patents, and has published over 35 technical papers.  In 2014, Bill was named a Fellow of the IEEE.