At the Robert Bosch Electronic Factory in Salzgitter, Germany, an automatic robotic arm and assisted guided vehicle (AGV) are using the most advanced 5G standalone features for the industry: time-sensitive networking (TSN), precise positioning and ultra-reliable low.
Qualcomm and Bosch have been testing 5G TSN in real-world industrial environments since 2019. The first new exhibition unveiled at Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2022 demonstrates the capabilities of 5G to automatically inspect manufactured parts. Fatih Ulupinar, chief engineer at Qualcomm Technologies, explained during a session at the Hanover Mess in 2022 that the demo revived many 5G capabilities: TSN, which enables time synchronization at the microsecond level, provided by the 5G URL Guides the AGV. Multiple 5G radios were installed in the factory for integrated multi-point transmission or COMP to facilitate super-reliable communication. Positioning capability, he added, is a non-communication feature of the 5G release 16 that is accomplished through an uplink sounding signal received by multiple 5G radios. AGV as well as 5G positioning estimates are compared with ground truth data. This first over-the-air display with a live 5G private network in a real factory environment provides position accuracy at ten centimeters, and accuracy can be further enhanced through advanced techniques such as sensor fusion or machine learning. The AGV carries a storage box in the arm of an autonomous mobile robot (AMR), controlled by TSN support, and captures parts for optical inspection by a high-resolution camera that also runs on 5G networks. Acceptable parts are then placed in the box of the AGV.
The 5G network uses a 3.75 GHz spectrum set aside by German regulators for industrial / private enterprise networks. In the future, AMR could go into the factory environment for a flexible floor configuration. Ulupina notes that multiple aspects of the display are an integral part of its success: support for high throughput with low latency, super-reliable data delivery with COMP, precise positioning, and microsecond-level time synchronization with TSN. Ulupina explains that industrial customers are accustomed to operating with wired networks that can support zero packet errors within 24 hours, 10 milliseconds or less during delivery cycles – too short for replay, so both guaranteed latency and guaranteed reliability are crucial. 5G can provide the required performance, and instead of relying on multiple networks to carry data and provide positioning and synchronization information, Ulupin noted, a single 5G network performs multiple tasks.
5G is a network that provides communication, TSN, positioning – all together, “he says.” People don’t have to have multiple networks to do different things.… To meet the 5G challenge and support mission-critical IoT with these rich requirements There are. “
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