PCA-Driven Adaptive Sensor Triage for Edge AI Inference

Industrial anomaly detection faces two engineering bottlenecks: memory bank construction latency and inference efficiency. Traditional sampling algorithms (Farthest Point Sampling, K-Means, etc.) rely on numerous backbone forward passes and iterative distance computations, with construction times ranging from minutes to hours; heavy computation components such as multi-scale feature extraction struggle to meet the millisecond-level real-time requirements of production lines. This paper focuses on sampling efficiency and inference optimization for industrial deployment with two core contributions: (1) PSP (Plugin Sampler Pipeline)---a four-stage adaptive memory bank sampling pipeline based on 18-dimensional pixel metadata and five complementary visual plugins. PSP completes all sampling with zero backbone forward passes; coarse filtering is sub-second numerical sorting, and metadata extraction is a one-time offline cost. PSP supports progressive deployment and incremental updates. (2) Two engineering optimization strategies---parallel memory bank similarity computation (reducing inference memory and latency by over 95%) and stratified pixel sampling for large-scale evaluation (reducing computation time by 20$\times$ while keeping metrics stable). As a vehicle for validation, we introduce LUMIN (Lightweight Universal Manufacturing Inspection Network) with extreme segmentation-head compression, systematically exploring the accuracy-efficiency frontier against strong baselines. Experiments on five benchmarks demonstrate that PSP matches state-of-the-art sampling accuracy at near-random construction cost (341$\times$ faster than FPS), while inference optimizations reduce evaluation time by 20$\times$ with negligible accuracy loss.

Integrated communication and computation (IC$^2$) has emerged as a new paradigm for enabling efficient edge inference in sixth-generation (6G) networks. However, the design of IC$^2$ technologies is hindered by the lack of a tractable theoretical framework for characterizing end-to-end (E2E) inference performance. The metric is highly complicated as it needs to account for both channel distortion and artificial intelligence (AI) model architecture and computational complexity. In this work, we address this challenge by developing a tractable analytical model for E2E inference accuracy and leveraging it to design a channel-adaptive AI algorithm that maximizes inference throughput, referred to as the edge processing rate (EPR), under latency and accuracy constraints. Specifically, we consider an edge inference system in which a server deploys a backbone model with early exit, which enables flexible computational complexity, to perform inference on data features transmitted by a mobile device. The proposed accuracy model characterizes high-dimensional feature distributions in the angular domain using a Mixture of von Mises (MvM) distribution. This leads to a desired closed-form expression for inference accuracy as a function of quantization bit-width and model traversal depth, which represents channel distortion and computational complexity, respectively. Building upon this accuracy model, we formulate and solve the EPR maximization problem under joint latency and accuracy constraints, leading to a channel-adaptive AI algorithm that achieves full IC$^2$ integration. The proposed algorithm jointly adapts transmit-side feature compression and receive-side model complexity according to channel conditions to maximize overall efficiency and inference throughput. Experimental results demonstrate its superior performance as compared with fixed-complexity counterparts.

Scientists increasingly rely on sensor-based data; however transforming raw streams into insights across the edge-to-cloud continuum remains difficult due to the breadth of expertise required to coordinate the necessary data and computation flow. This paper introduces a pattern-based, AI-assisted methodology for rapid development of sensor-driven applications. Using Pegasus workflows executing on the FABRIC testbed, we demonstrate a 5-step development loop that shifts workflow construction and deployment from code-first to intent-first design. Starting from an existing Orcasound hydrophone workflow as a reusable template, we generate and refine workflows for air quality, earthquake, and soil moisture monitoring applications. We further show how these workflows extend to edge resources-including BlueField-3 DPUs and Raspberry Pis-through configuration and placement rather than workflow redesign. Our evaluation, from the perspective of a novice Pegasus user, shows that AI-assisted pattern reuse compresses multi-stage workflow development to 1-1.5 days per workflow while preserving the rigor and portability of workflow-based execution.