Martel Innovate proudly co-organised the Swarm Workshop 2025: Programming Tools for Decentralised Intelligence and Swarms, a major joint event of the Horizon Europe Swarm Computing Cluster.
Held at the Bedford Hotel in Brussels on 26-27 November 2025, the workshop brought together more than 120 participants from academia, industry, and public authorities. Experts from five Horizon Europe projects — P2CODE, TaRDIS, OASEES, OpenSwarm, and SmartEdge — shared their latest results in decentralised intelligence, distributed AI, and edge-to-cloud automation.
Martel’s strategic role in the swarm computing cluster
Martel Innovate plays a strategic role in the swarm computing ecosystem as a partner in both TaRDIS and P2CODE. In these projects, Martel leads communication and dissemination activities, contributes to project management, and in P2CODE also drives exploitation planning, socio-economic analysis, and migration studies.
Through its organisational leadership and cross-project involvement, Martel helped shape a programme that highlighted not only scientific excellence but also clear pathways toward real-world impact.
A vision for swarm-enabled digital infrastructure
The workshop opened with keynote remarks from Rolf Riemenschneider, Head of Sector for IoT at the European Commission. He emphasised the importance of decentralised intelligence for strengthening Europe’s digital sovereignty.
Project coordinators followed with a joint overview showing how swarm technologies are laying the foundations for future distributed systems. These systems are designed to support autonomous collaboration, dynamic decision-making, and secure operation across the entire computing continuum.
Key themes from the Swarm Workshop 2025
Opening keynotes and core concepts
Participants gained shared insights into the concepts underpinning swarm-enabled systems, including autonomous collaboration, distributed decision-making, and edge-orchestrated intelligence. These discussions demonstrated how decentralised intelligence can improve scalability, resilience, and autonomy in complex digital environments.
Sector-focused sessions
Presentations showcased how decentralised intelligence is already shaping solutions across multiple sectors, including:
- Smart factory automation
- Mobility and logistics
- Energy systems
- Environmental monitoring
- Healthcare
Speakers illustrated how swarm architectures enable real-time coordination among heterogeneous devices and services.
Success stories and early impact
Dedicated sessions highlighted scientific breakthroughs, open-source contributions, and early exploitation opportunities emerging from the five projects. Discussions focused on how the cluster is collectively maturing and translating research results into innovation-ready building blocks for European industry and public services.
Measuring impact beyond technology
Martel contributed directly through a presentation by Amrita Prasad, Partnership and Community Expert at Martel Innovate, who shared Impact Success Stories from across the swarm projects.
Her talk emphasised that impact takes many forms — including standardisation, open-source development, policy engagement, skills-building, outreach, and ecosystem formation. She demonstrated how diverse contributions across the cluster are converging to create lasting value for Europe’s digital future.
AI and Distributed Intelligence in swarm systems
A dedicated set of talks explored advances in:
- Federated learning
- Edge-based AI inference
- Distributed analytics
- The potential role of generative AI in swarm systems
These sessions highlighted the growing convergence between AI and decentralised orchestration, showing how intelligent agents can operate effectively with minimal central coordination.
Demo exhibition showcases swarm applications
Throughout the exhibition area, the five projects presented demonstrations illustrating the breadth of swarm intelligence applications across Europe. The demos covered:
- Industrial safety and smart manufacturing
- Emergency response and autonomous robotics
- Smart energy systems and environmental monitoring
- Digital health and human–machine collaboration
- Data sovereignty and secure edge-to-cloud workflows
Rather than focusing on technical details, the exhibition highlighted the real-world potential of decentralised intelligence to support safer workplaces, more sustainable energy communities, resilient infrastructure, and adaptive digital services.
Martel’s vision for Europe’s decentralised future
As co-organiser of the Swarm Workshop 2025 and an active contributor to two cluster projects, Martel reaffirmed its commitment to:
- Strengthening European leadership in decentralised intelligence
- Supporting Horizon Europe projects from research to exploitation
- Bridging technical innovation with societal and economic insights
The Swarm Workshop 2025 clearly demonstrated that decentralised intelligence is no longer a distant vision. It is rapidly becoming a practical foundation for Europe’s future digital autonomy — and Martel remains committed to being at the heart of this transformation.
