Smart food scanner system based on mobile edge computing

Smart applications, including Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data analytics, are traditionally hosted by cloud infrastructures, which can result in high latency and cost beyond users expectation. Edge computing has emerged as a paradigm that can alleviate the pressure on clouds by delegating parts of the computation to devices in the edge of the network, at closer proximity to end users and IoT devices. In this paper, we discuss a smart application, built on top of mobile edge computing concept, to enables users to measure and analyse their food intake and support nutritional decision-making. The approach utilizes mobile edge computing to offload application computations and communications to the edge, thus saving battery life, increasing the processing capacity, and improving user comfort. In order to develop this system, we propose a loosely coupled architecture for a smart food scanner and then implement it using various IoT sensors. The performance evaluation results reveal that the implemented system can be used as an interactive appliance by users with minimum dependency and usage of their mobile phones