Software Engineering Approaches for TinyML based IoT Embedded Vision: A Systematic Literature Review

TL;DR

This paper systematically reviews software engineering approaches tailored for TinyML-based IoT embedded vision, highlighting challenges and solutions to facilitate scalable real-world deployment of TinyML in IoT devices.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive synthesis of current SE frameworks and best practices specifically adapted for TinyML embedded vision applications in IoT.

Findings

Identified key challenges faced by TinyML developers.

Reviewed state-of-the-art SE approaches in embedded systems and ML.

Suggested synergies between SE practices for scalable TinyML deployment.

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) has catapulted human ability to control our environments through ubiquitous sensing, communication, computation, and actuation. Over the past few years, IoT has joined forces with Machine Learning (ML) to embed deep intelligence at the far edge. TinyML (Tiny Machine Learning) has enabled the deployment of ML models for embedded vision on extremely lean edge hardware, bringing the power of IoT and ML together. However, TinyML powered embedded vision applications are still in a nascent stage, and they are just starting to scale to widespread real-world IoT deployment. To harness the true potential of IoT and ML, it is necessary to provide product developers with robust, easy-to-use software engineering (SE) frameworks and best practices that are customized for the unique challenges faced in TinyML engineering. Through this systematic literature review, we aggregated the key challenges reported by TinyML developers and identified state-of-art SE approaches in large-scale Computer Vision, Machine Learning, and Embedded Systems that can help address key challenges in TinyML based IoT embedded vision. In summary, our study draws synergies between SE expertise that embedded systems developers and ML developers have independently developed to help address the unique challenges in the engineering of TinyML based IoT embedded vision.