Qingwen Yang1, Zhi Li2, Jiawei Tang1, Yanyi Liu1, Tiezheng Guo1, Yingyou Wen1,*
CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.87, No.2, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2025.074384
- 12 March 2026
Abstract Deploying Large Language Model (LLM)-based agents in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) presents significant challenges, including high latency from cloud-based APIs, data privacy concerns, and the infeasibility of deploying monolithic models on resource-constrained edge devices. While smaller models (SLMs) are suitable for edge deployment, they often lack the reasoning power for complex, multi-step tasks. To address these issues, this paper introduces LEAF, a Lightweight Edge Agent Framework designed for efficiently executing complex tasks at the edge. LEAF employs a novel architecture where multiple expert SLMs—specialized for planning, execution, and interaction—work in concert, decomposing complex… More >