Through its Low-Carbon Mobile Computing project, SmartRDI took part in the EIT Climate-KIC accelerator (South-East Europe cohort), developing a mobile offloading platform that reduces the energy footprint of smartphones and connects climate awareness directly to everyday computing.
The Mission
Battery life is a finite resource, yet most environmental apps drain it faster than they raise awareness. SmartRDI's insight was that the energy problem and the climate communication problem are the same problem, both require smarter allocation of compute resources.
Our slogan at the time: "Towards a green mobile interconnected world."
The Problem
Mobile cloud computing offloads tasks to the cloud for speed, but ignores energy: the device pays for the data transfer, the cloud pays for the compute. Neither is accounted for transparently.
We built a contextual offloading engine that routes tasks opportunistically to nearby devices over short-range radio, far more efficient than a long-haul cloud round trip, while climate-awareness apps ran on top of the same platform.
2
Accelerator stages completed (Stage 2 and 3), South-East Europe cohort, 2017–2018
TRL 3
Technology Readiness Level at the start of the accelerator
TRL 4
Technology Readiness Level reached, Android framework validated on real devices
How It Worked
Step 01: Workload Profiling
Each computation is profiled before execution. The engine learns the cost in CPU cycles, memory, and expected data volume for that task type.
Step 02: Contextual Search
A feature-prediction algorithm scans nearby trusted devices via BLE/Wi-Fi Direct. It models their availability and mobility to estimate whether offloading will actually save energy.
Step 03: Offloading Decision
If a nearby device wins the cost model, the task migrates transparently over short-range radio. The app developer sees only an inter-process communication call, the offloading is hidden.
Step 04: Climate Apps on Top
Carbon footprint tracking, community carpooling suggestions, and pollution reporting apps ran on the framework, sharing data with neighbours without needing a permanent internet connection.
Programme Milestones
Jun 2018
Version control and project management in place.
Aug 2018
Working prototype of the offloading framework.
Aug 2018
Core team of two or more members in place.
Sep 2018
Target users and personas for the mobile app defined.
Sep 2018
Project website and logo launched.
Oct 2018
Mobile app ready for field deployment and publication on Google Play.
Technology Stack
The platform was designed to run on any off-the-shelf Android device without bespoke hardware, using opportunistic communication channels already present in consumer smartphones.
Academic roots
SmartRDI was founded as a spin-off of MobyLab at the University Politehnica of Bucharest, a research group specialising in pervasive services and mobile computing. The Climate-KIC work built directly on published research in Computer Networks and related journals.
EU Support
This venture was supported by EIT Climate-KIC, the climate innovation community of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), as part of the 2017–2018 South-East Europe cohort. Across its 18-month, three-stage structure the programme provided business validation, mentorship, and seed funding to accelerate the platform from TRL 3 to TRL 4.