AT&T Business and Samsung Electronics America have unveiled the first 5G use cases for their 5G Innovation Zone targeted at improving the safety, security, efficiency and performance of smart factories.
Located in Austin, Texas, the 5G Innovation Zone will seek to show how wireless communication technologies can be used to take advantage of 5G’s latency improvements and faster data speeds. The 5G Innovation Zone will focus on a combination of multiple connectivity technologies including 5G, LTE and Wi-Fi and will evolve to include future 5G devices.
The research at the new center will focus on health and environmental sensors in how first responders could help better locate employees or speed up response times in emergency situations. Verizon has similarly been working on using 5G for first responders and AT&T and Samsung will investigate how the technology can be used to communicate an injured person’s vitals, including heart rate, blood pressure and temperature, directly to first responders during the first critical hour for faster care.
Automated material handling, industrial IoT and robotics research will focus on how 5G can support smart factories using the technology to enable large-scale, near real-time monitoring and proactive maintenance of automation equipment. The research will also investigate how material handling systems equipped with IoT sensors and 4K wireless cameras can be used for remote monitoring of factory automation equipment to collect data such as acceleration, position, temperature, humidity and gas flow rates.
Finally, the 5G Innovation Zone will look into how 5G and augmented reality could be used to train employees in manufacturing using glasses along with low latency content to provide untethered method to virtually train hundreds of employees with access to equipment diagnostics as well as directions for repairs.
While 5G technology is in its infancy and only live in a handful of countries, companies are already exploring what the next-generation technology will allow in terms of new use cases where cellular wasn’t used before such as in robotics, emergency response, construction, agriculture, internet of things and manufacturing.
