Edge AI: The Shift to On-Device Inference

On-device inference is usually sold as cheaper, faster, and more private. I would describe it more narrowly: it gives you a system whose worst case you can know in advance. It does not remove cost, it moves it onto the user's hardware and battery. It does not remove latency, it removes the network, so the delay that remains can be measured and designed around. It keeps raw data off someone else's server, but a device can still be lost or compromised, and many "on-device" products quietly pass harder requests to the cloud. The price is a hard power budget, which on a drone comes straight out of