The document provides an overview of federated learning, a distributed machine learning approach that trains models using decentralized datasets from edge devices while addressing challenges such as data privacy and regulations. It differentiates federated learning from traditional distributed machine learning by noting that in the former, data remains at its source and is not uniformly distributed. Key aspects include the roles of servers and clients, the communication process involved in model training, and various types of federated learning based on client and data characteristics.