Designing Smart Services for Smart Factories through Continuum Computing

This paper discusses a simulation-based design approach for Smart Services, to be deployed in the Computing Continuum and aimed at improving human workers’ productivity and safety within a Smart Factory context. A wearable computing system (providing Augmented Reality and Fatigue Detection services) synergistically operates with a wireless sensor network (for monitoring gas level and, hence, the Air Healthiness): such a use case highlights how the simulation activity allows the preliminary evaluation of key design choices of the system and, especially, of these services (e.g., how many workers can be served given a particular system configuration or how the choice of a particular algorithm or hardware impacts on the KPIs). The result analysis confirms the importance of such an approach as a key enabler for supporting the informed decision-making within the service design process, especially when applied to complex system deployment spanning across the Continuum Computing, from the Edge to the Cloud.