This is how Prof. Mario Gerla of the department of computer science at
the University of California, Los Angeles, introduced his day-long
tutorial on “Vehicle Services and Vehicular Cloud Computing” at the
Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) on 24 November 2014.
Prof. Gerla pointed out that the ‘vehicular cloud’ is different from
the ‘internet cloud’ since it depends on the location of the vehicles.
Vehicular cloud is sparse and intermittent, though it has the ability
to interact with both the personal cloud and the internet cloud.
Applications of the vehicular cloud are no longer restricted to safety
and transportation, and it is being increasingly used for serving
location-specific information and advertisements. The concept of
Person-to-Person (P2P) torrent downloading has been extended to vehicle
services.
Coupled with these applications are issued related to surveillance and
security. Safety and mobility are the other two significant challenges
that ‘vehicular clouds’ seek to address, he said.
Prof. Gerla’s tutorial marked a milestone for the Asian School on
Computer Science, since this was the 25th tutorial in the series, said
Prof. Kanchana Kanchanasut, Vice President for Research, AIT. Organized
by AIT’s intERLab, the event drew nearly 50 scholars and researchers
from numerous institutes and universities.
