5G-Powered IIoT Solutions to be Tested by Hitachi America’s Dedicated 5G Lab Network

Author photo: Shin Kai
ByShin Kai
Category:
Company and Product News

Hitachi Ltd. announced that a dedicated 5G network has been installed at its Silicon Valley Research Center in Santa Clara, part of the Research & Development Division of Hitachi America, Ltd. in partnership with Ericsson.  The network will leverage 5G and Hitachi’s platform technology to accelerate the development and demonstrate the value of digital transformation across industries.  Partnered with Ericsson to install a dedicated 5G network,  Hitachi America intends to start by testing manufacturing solutions using the 5G  teleoperation technology co-developed with Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and continuing to work closely with Ericsson on joint development initiatives for industry solutions as a result of this new dedicated 5G lab network.

Collaborative robotics between humans and robots will be a key technology to leverage as our society works to achieve contactless, fully automated systems while maintaining human supervision.  The remote control of industrial robots by human operators as well as intuitive operation of robots by analysis/control functions located on a multi-access edge computing (MEC) server will require high-speed detailed communication between humans and robots to enable accurate assessment of what is happening on site.  Further, with increasing trend towards personalization, today’s manufacturing industry is fast evolving towards hyper-customization done at scale, which will require flexible production lines.

The key technologies that are making flexible automation at scale possible are robotics and AI, with 5G and time-sensitive networking (TSN) serving as a digital backbone.  Hitachi America, in collaboration with Georgia Tech, is developing novel applications to realize flexible automation powered by 5G edge AI technology.  One such application is real-time and interactive remote collaboration between skilled workers and machines.  Optimized control of the robot can be realized by the 5G edge AI technology allocated to the MEC server and by utilizing the wide variety of large-capacity sensor data (comprised of 4K video and TOF sensor information) collected from the site via 5G to support appropriate judgement by the remote human operator.

To validate this technology, a scenario case was assumed where a fully automated robotic arm picking task is affected by a malfunction.  Such a situation may occur, for example, if the object to be picked up by the robotic arm is not positioned correctly or is of a different size or shape.  Hitachi’s 5G edge AI technology provides seamless intuitive remote control of the robotic arm through the real-time analysis of comprehensive sensing data.  This technology is expected to reduce work time by 50 – 70 percent compared to the conventional method, in which a remote operator directly controls a robotic arm.  The technology incorporates flexible automation at scale, which will help usher the manufacturing industry into a new age of hyper-customization.

The dedicated 5G network will provide a test environment for Hitachi America and Ericsson to explore 5G solutions in North America, as well as for potential interested customers to join Hitachi’s co-creation approach to accelerate development and validate the value of digital transformation.

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