Deploying AI on Edge: Advancement and Challenges in Edge Intelligence

Abstract

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has achieved significant progress and remarkable advancements across various disciplines, including biology, computer science, and industry. However, the increasing complexity of AI network structures and the vast number of associated parameters impose substantial computational and storage demands, severely limiting the practical deployment of these models on resource-constrained edge devices. Although edge intelligence methods have been proposed to alleviate the computational and storage burdens, they still face multiple persistent challenges, such as large-scale model deployment, poor interpretability, privacy and security vulnerabilities, and energy efficiency constraints. This article systematically reviews the current advancements in edge intelligence technologies, highlights key enabling techniques including model sparsity, quantization, knowledge distillation, neural architecture search, and federated learning, and explores their applications in industrial, automotive, healthcare, and consumer domains. Furthermore, this paper presents a comparative analysis of these techniques, summarizes major trade-offs, and proposes decision frameworks to guide deployment strategies under different scenarios. Finally, it discusses future research directions to address the remaining technical bottlenecks and promote the practical and sustainable development of edge intelligence. Standing at the threshold of an exciting new era, we believe edge intelligence will play an increasingly critical role in transforming industries and enabling ubiquitous intelligent services.