Sophia Antipolis, 8 October 2018

ETSI’s Industry Specification Group (ISG) on Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) has declared its first MEC Hackathons series a success after developers gathered in Europe and China to test their applications with ETSI MEC APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) in a variety of use cases.

The events took place simultaneously on 18-19 September in Beijing, Berlin and Turin. With the automotive sector being one of the hottest areas for edge computing and 5G, the main focus of the first Hackathons series was in-vehicle infotainment. Teams were asked to develop Entertainment and/or VR/AR applications, as in-car mobile solutions for passengers, using ETSI MEC technologies. Other applications that can benefit from the reduced latency and enhanced performance of MEC were also welcomed. The teams were required to onboard their applications in real-life MEC systems and connect with the MEC APIs to receive simulated in-network data. Huawei, Intel and Saguna provided the MEC platforms. Huawei and Intel also supplied server hardware.

The Berlin Hackathon was organized by ETSI and supported by Huawei, Intel, ISMB, I3P, Saguna, VIAVI and Vodafone. The eventual winner, EDGEGAP, proposed a solution for real-time optimization of multi-player games. This was installed on two MEC platforms – Saguna, based on virtual machines, and Huawei, based on containers – demonstrating the portability of MEC apps.

The winner of the Turin Hackathon, JARVIS, put forward a solution that exploited MEC’s performance capabilities within vehicles’ collision avoidance systems. Their prize was inclusion in the city of Turin’s Smart Road project, providing the possibility of implementing and testing the application within a live 5G automotive infrastructure trial in the urban environment of Turin. The second placed team, Drivenet, are to receive free mentoring and consultancy on their project from I3P, the start-up incubator of the Polytechnic University of Turin, which also hosted the Hackathon.

The event in Beijing was hosted by China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom and Huawei, and organized by CCSA, Huawei, Intel and SDN/NFV Industry Alliance. ETSI provided support. Following a full day of hacking, pitches, demonstrations and technical Q&A sessions, four of the participating teams were recognized with Best Awards. China Mobile Research Institute and Neusoft received the Application Innovation Award for “Low-latency intelligent image identification based on edge computing”. China Unicom and Shenzhen Santu Tech’s “MEC edge cloud 3D holographic E2E service solution” was named Best Application Prospect. The “Smart eye” solution by CTBRI received Best Technology Innovation Award and the Best Technical Contribution Award went to “Cloud goods identification of MEC-based computing prioritized network” developed by China Mobile Research Institute and Huawei 2012 Laboratories. In addition, five other teams were rewarded with Excellence Awards.

Dario Sabella, Intel, secretary of ETSI ISG MEC and Lead of Industry Groups, commented: “These first MEC Hackathons have revealed a wealth of talented teams who have shown the benefits that can be gained today from utilising the MEC platforms and MEC APIs in edge computing applications. This provides a valuable snapshot but the most encouraging news is that these teams and others are continuing to create interoperable systems that will bring the full benefits of MEC to emerging 5G services.”

Sami Kekki, Huawei, vice chair of ETSI ISG MEC, said: “The interest shown in these events in Europe and Asia demonstrates the global enthusiasm for using MEC standards to unleash the power of edge computing in a broad spectrum of applications. We were impressed by the variety of entries and their inventiveness.”

ETSI ISG MEC has been pioneering open standards for edge computing since 2014 and its tenure has recently been extended for a further two years. In conjunction with other ETSI ISGs, the group will continue to develop test methodology specifications to extend interoperability and compliance in multi-vendor, multi-network, multi-service environments to further promote the adoption of MEC APIs by vendors and open source communities.

About ETSI
ETSI provides members with an open and inclusive environment to support the timely development, ratification and testing of globally applicable standards for ICT-enabled systems, applications and services across all sectors of industry and society. We are a not-for-profit body with more than 800 member organizations worldwide, drawn from 66 countries and five continents. Members comprise a diversified pool of large and small private companies, research entities, academia, government and public organizations. ETSI is one of only three bodies officially recognized by the EU as a European Standards Organization (ESO). For more information please visit: www.etsi.org or follow us on Twitter @ETSI_Standards

Contact
Claire Boyer
Mob: +33 (0)6 87 60 84 40
Email: claire.boyer@etsi.org