In cases that do not require human interfacing, limited or remote due to inaccessibility, core intelligence can be combined with centralized electric I/O. By using a high number of sensors and actuators, this approach can limit costs and the complication of large cabling bundles on your machine. For high throughput, low latency I/O, which has the processing power close to where the action is taking place, will prevent additional delays and complexity in avoidable communication channels, providing physically short feedback paths and control loops.

And even if core intelligence is remote, local processing can preprocess sensor data or close fast feedback loops, creating a structured implementation of distributed intelligence.