Master Practical Course: Edge Computing and the Internet of Things

Important Information

• Pre-meeting: @14-16:00 on Feb 9th, 2026 via BBB Online room 
      Pre course meeting presentation: [Pre-course-Meeting Slides]
• Registration: using the matching system
• Duration: April 2026 to September  2026 with:
  • 1 weekly theory lecture
  • 1 biweekly meeting to check student's practical progress
  • 2 demo presentation sessions
  • final documentation and project artifacts that have to be submitted in August (date TBD).
  • We plan to hold all lectures and meetings in person!
• ECTS: 10.
• Capacity: 24
• Practical Lab Room: MI 01.05.013 (Theoretical lecture room: MI 00.08.036 16-18:00 Mon)
• Calendar and Time: A Google Calendar subscribe link is here, all practical sessions happen during 13:00-17:00 Thu.
  • Intro session (lectures explain the topics for theoretical and practical parts): April 16, 2026
  • Idea session (students present their ideas and plans for the topic): April 23, 2026
  • Sprint Session #1 May 7, 2026
  • Sprint Session #2 May 21, 2026
  • Interim Demo June 11, 2026
  • Sprint Session #3 June 25, 2026
  • Sprint Session #4 July 9, 2026
  • Final Demo (Exam) July 23, 2026
• Concept: Teams of max 4 students will be given a set of equipment (mobile devices, RaspberryPis, microcontrollers, sensors, ...) to build a IoT-Edge-Cloud continuum system out of them.

Course Description

While the Internet of Things (IoT) connects the physical world to the digital realm, the sheer volume of data generated by billions of devices creates a bottleneck for centralized cloud infrastructures. Edge Computing solves this by pushing computation, data storage, and analytics closer to the source—right where the data is created.

This course aims to provide participants with essential practice for building IoT devices and edge systems in a hands-on project-based manner, embracing a learning-while-building philosophy.

What you are required to do:

• Design a project idea with your teammates.
• Build and refine your hardware and software-based system in an iterative manner.
• Present your results to an audience with presentations, a working demo, and a report.
• Work in a team using latest tools and platforms like a pro.

What we provide you:

• An extensive set of hardware devices for crafting your own prototype
• Sprint sessions for work-in-progress demo
• After-session discussion, feedbacks, and supervision
• Appointment based help and guidance, potential derived research or thesis topic

Teaching and learning methods

This course will be taught in English.

This course has two different modules:

• IoT Module: building hardware-heavy prototypes using a set of sensors, Raspberry Pis, Esp 32, LoRa, etc.
• Edge Module: building software-heavy systems that push computations close to the datasources.

Both modules share the same theoretical lectures to broaden their views. Topics covered during the lectures:

• Programming things: IoT OS, hardware abstractions, IoT programming frameworks
• Connecting things: lower layers, IPv6, transport protocols
• Web of things: REST, MQTT, CoAP
• IoT service architectures: Cloud-based, edge-based, device-to-device
• IoT services: Mashups, big data, machine learning
• Overview of security and IoT: privacy, threat models, attacks, mechanisms

This course will have maximum 24 participants in total. Participants must form project groups that include members from both modules to ensure their IoT-edge-cloud continuum project is comprehensive. Ideally we will have 6 groups with 4 participants each.

The practical part will have 8 sessions. Sessions are expected to be held in FMI building and in-person).

• Introduction session (about 1.5 hour including QA)
• Ideation session (15mins for presentation + 5 mins QA)
• 4 sprint sessions (15mins for presentation + 5 mins QA)
• 1 interim session, and 1 final demo session (20 mins for presentation + 10 mins QA)

Available devices

• Each team is required to plan their hardware requirements in advance. There will be two 'Call for Hardware' deadlines during the course, where groups may request the equipment needed for their pitched projects. A full inventory of available devices (e.g., Raspberry Pis, microcontrollers, sensors) will be disclosed at the start of the course.
• Additionally, we may purchase specific hardware on demand, provided there is a compelling use case and sufficient justification.
• 3D printers are also provided for essential components for hardwares. Their uses should be appointment-based and get approval beforehand.

Contacts

• Giovanni Bartolomeo <giovanni.bartolomeo@tum.de>
• Wei Geng <wei.geng@tum.de>
• PD Dr. Christian Prehofer <christian.prehofer@tum.de>
• Prof. Jörg Ott

If you're very interested in taking this course, please use your TUM email address to send a motivation letter to BOTH Giovanni and Wei to increase your chance of getting matched to the course. Please put “[Edge&IoT course]” at the beginning of your subject to be easier recognized.