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# The Retrieval Layer for Edge AI


- **Date:** Thursday, Jul 9, 2026
- **Time:** 11:30–12:00 (30 min)
- **Room:** Stage 1
- **Event:** World Congress 2026 Europe

## Recording

[Watch recording](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100033-the-retrieval-layer-for-edge-ai)

## Description

Edge AI is almost there: on smart glasses, robots, phones, kiosks… The last push it needs is semantic search over local data that still works when connectivity is weak, and when latency and privacy are non-negotiable.
On-device vector search unlocks “memory” and real-time assistance across devices: from “help me find my keys” on smart glasses, to robot task context, to anomaly logging in vertical farming, to offline support and personalization on phones and kiosks.
In this talk, we’ll show how we made that possible with Qdrant Edge: an embedded vector search engine built for the constraints of edge devices. 
We’ll walk through the architecture and core engineering tradeoffs, and tie it together with a demo (smart glasses are mentioned here for a reason!).

## Speakers

### [Sasha Denisov](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@sasha-denisov)

CTO and Co-Founder of Brainform.ai
### [Chadha Sridi](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@chadha-sridi)

DevRel at Qdrant 


## Related talks at this congress

- [The Retrieval Layer in Context Engineering: From Intuition to Implementation](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1353-the-retrieval-layer) — Evgeniya Sukhodolskaya
- [From Perception to Autonomy: Building Agentic Edge AI Robots with ROS 2](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1324-from-perception-to) — Moe Sani
- [Edge AI on iOS: Beyond the Cloud, Designing the Next Generation of Intelligent On-Device Apps](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1256-edge-ai-on-ios) — Precious Osaro
- [From Vector Search to Better Understanding: How Hybrid RAG Improves Answers, Not Just Matches](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/968-from-vector-search) — David vonThenen