Showing posts with label Robotics and Automation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robotics and Automation. Show all posts

Monday 21 December 2020

Challenges and Future Perspectives of Industrial 5G

Andreas Mueller, Head of communication and network technology at Bosch Corporate Research and Chair of 5G ACIA recently spoke at 'What Next for Wireless Infrastructure Summit' by TelecomTV about Industrial 5G. The following is paraphrased from his presentation 'Industrial 5G: Remaining challenges and future perspectives' which is embedded below: 

5G has the potential to become the central nervous system of the factory of the future, enabling unprecedented levels of flexibility, efficiency, productivity and also ease of use.  At the same time it's also a very special application domain so in many cases there are very demanding QoS requirements. 

Industrial applications have multi-faceted requirements where one case may require very low latencies and high reliabilities for instance, while for others we may need very high data rates (for example HD cameras). There is no single use case with a single set of requirements but many different use cases with very diverse requirements which also have to be supported in many cases at the very same time. 

As we need only a local network with local connectivity, this performance is required only in a very controlled environment; inside a factory, inside a plant. This allows for specific optimizations and makes certain things easier but we also always have brownfields deployments in many cases that means we have to live what we have in place today so that's typically wired communication in some cases it's wi-fi and similar wireless solutions and we have to be able to smoothly integrate a 5G network into this existing infrastructure

The developments towards Industrial 5G started about three years ago i would say and in the meantime it really has become a hot topic everybody is talking about industrial 5G. It has become a focused topic in standardization in 3GPP and some key capabilities already have been standardized which have been briefly outlined in the presentation. 

Good progress has also been made in the ecosystem development so we've established the 5G Alliance for Connected Industries and Automation two and a half years ago which serves as a global forum for bringing all relevant stakeholders together and for driving industrial 5G and we have 76 members today which includes major players from the telco industry but also from the industrial domain and also of course some universities and so on. We have seen the advent of non-public networks (NPN) so for the first time it will be possible for a manufacturers to deploy and operate such non-public networks inside a factory which are to some extent decoupled from the public networks.

If we look at the standardization timeline this is what you get. The first version of 5G release 15 of 3GPP was approved mid last year and it still had a very strong focus on consumer application and enhanced mobile broadband. If you buy 5G today, this is what you get then. Release-16 has for the first time had a very strong focus on industrial applications this has been approved in June this year and it includes features like ultra reliable low latency communication, non-public networks, time-sensitive communication. It means support for time-sensitive networking 5G and also native layer 2 transport so that we don't necessarily need internet protocol but we can directly transmit ethernet frames over a 5G network which again is very important especially for the industrial domain.

Release 17 is currently underway and it will come along with several enhancements of these features. It also has a stronger focus on positioning which is again very important in manufacturing because knowing where things are is a very valuable information and it will be in this new transmission mode called NR RedCap which is somewhere somewhere in between this high-end mobile broadband mode and also this low-end a massive machine type communication and this might be especially suitable for industrial sensors for example and then of course the journey will continue with Release 18 which is still being defined but with a high probability i would say it will more focus on massive iot applications that means tiny little sensors for example which have to be connected using very low energy and low costs and not just the natural next step.

So many things have been done already towards supporting these industrial applications but if you look at factories today there are only very few of them which already make use of 5g and that's because there are still some challenges to be overcome some of them are listed here first of all having the features in the standard is nice but they also have to be implemented in the chipsets and infrastructure components and that still say test takes some time especially if we consider that really 16 is the first release which really has many of the features that make a difference to the industrial domain

Here is a list of the features that can be prioritised for future 5G releases or even for 6G. As Release-17 has just been delayed slightly, quite possible that some of the features expected in 5G may get pushed on to Beyond 5G and even 6G.

Here is the embedded talk

An interview by Dr. Andreas Müller regarding Bosch 5G activities is available here (in German)

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Friday 14 December 2018

Robots in Telecoms World - A presentation from #CWFDT event on 'Robots: Assistance, Automation, Entertainment'


Another of the CW (Cambridge Wireless) Future Devices & Technologies (#CWFDT) event 'Robots: Assistance, Automation, Entertainment' happened a few weeks back. I had helped arrange the event and as always when a speaker dropped out at the last minute, I prepared a short talk on what role Robots play in the telecoms world. More later.

Robots have been part of human imagination for decades for example they feature heavily in popular culture and we typically have a favourite robot character. My favourite was 'Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot'. Even though it was made in 1967, I saw it only in 1986.

The anticipated future impact of Robots is widely discussed. Their potential use in military operations may well change the face of future warfare, whilst in civilian life, industrial and domestic, it is speculated how they will both be our assistants and our replacements.

The intention of the event was to reflect on the challenges of lives transformed by new human-robot relationships.

While we had interesting talks and I think we succeeded in achieving what we set out to, not all speakers shared their presentations but you can see the ones available here.

My talk along with the videos is embedded below. If you prefer to hear my talk as it was, it's on YouTube here.



A twitter moment with some of the tweets from the day is embedded below:





Related Post:

Sunday 22 April 2018

Short summary of #CWFDT event 'Smart Devices of 2025'


Last month, just before the Easter break, I along with some other SIG champions of the Future Devices & Technologies group at CW (Cambridge Wireless) organised an event titled 'Smart Devices of 2025'. Technologies are moving at such an amazing speed that it is not easy to foresee anything beyond 6-8 years. Hence 2025, 7 years from now.



As this was the inaugural event for the revamped SIG, the slides above are my quick introduction to the SIG. We not only talked about the future but we had some nice futuristic devices too. The nuFood 3D Food Printer by Dovetailed printed out some fancy toppings that could go on cheesecake and on other food, making it more appetising. Here is the video on how it works.



All the talks were very informative and very well explained. Its amazing how all of them came together to form a complete picture. The talks are all available here (limited time for non-CW members)

The starting talk by David Wood (@dw2), chair of London Futurists was not only informative and relevant to the subject being discussed but equally entertaining, especially for those who have been in the mobile industry for a long time. He has kindly agreed for me to share his slides which are embedded below.



David talks about NBIC (slide 18) and how it could be combined with Social-tech and Planetary-tech in future to do a lot more than what we can do with it today. While David explains NBIC in his slides, I found this short video on this topic that I think is worth embedding.



It was also good to hear Dr Jenny Tillotson again after a long time. I blogged about smell transmission some 6 years back here. This is something that is still work in progress and probably will be ready by 2025. In the meantime 'Context-Driven Fragrances' can be used for variety of purposes from entertainment to health.


Finally, here is another small presentation (with embedded video) on Telepresence Robots that I did.



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Saturday 2 April 2016

Some interesting April Fools' Day 2016 Technology Jokes

When I posted April Fools' jokes on the blog last couple of years (see 2014 & 2015) , they seem to be very popular so I thought its worth posting them this year too. If I missed any interesting ones, please add in comments.


The one I really liked best is the Samsung Internet of Trousers (IoT) featuring:

Wi-Fly: Gone are the days of unnoticed, unzipped trouser zippers upon exiting the restroom. Should your fly remain open for more than three minutes, the ZipARTIK module will send a series of notifications to your smartphone to save you from further embarrassment.

Get Up! Alert: Using pressure sensors, Samsung’s intelligent trousers detect prolonged periods of inactivity and send notifications to ‘get up off of that thing’ at least once an hour. Should you remain seated for more than three hours, devices embedded in each of the rear pockets send mild electrical shocks to provide extra motivation.

Keep-Your-Pants-On Mode: Sometimes it’s easy to get carried away with the moment. The Samsung Bio-Processor in your pants checks your bio-data including your heart rate and perspiration level. If these indicators get too high, Samsung’s trousers will send you subtle notifications as a reminder of the importance of keeping your cool.

Fridge Lock: If the tension around your waist gets too high, the embedded ARTIK chip module will send signals to your refrigerator to prevent you from overeating. The fridge door lock can then only be deactivated with consent from a designated person such as your mother or significant other.



Microsoft has an MS-DOS mobile in mind for this day. I wont be surprised if a real product like this does become popular with older generation. I personally wouldn't mind an MS-DOS app on my mobile. Here is a video:





It would have been strange if we didnt have a Robot for a joke. Domino's have introduced the Domimaker. Here's how it works:





T-Mobile USA is not shy pulling punches on its rivals with the Binge On data plan where it lets people view certain video channels without using up their data. Here is the video and more details on mashable.



Samsung ExoKinetic helps your phone self-charge

Google had quite a few pranks as always. I will ignore 'mic drop' which backfired and caused them headache.

Google Express has a new delivery mechanism, just for the April Fool's day. (There has to be one drone idea)





Google Cardboard Plastic is an interesting one too. Here is the video:


Finally, its the Google Fiber Teleportation.



Other interesting ones: