Vodafone Germany is working hard to develop its private network for Industry 4.0. According to a new announcement with Nokia, the two companies are testing High Accuracy Indoor Positioning (HAIP) services at BMW’s Leipzig factory via a 5G “Campus Network” (“CampusNets”). This is the main location for testing the automaker’s new Edge. 5G and AI capabilities. The technology is used to locate machines, tools, vehicles, and spare parts on the jobsite, theoretically with centimeter-level accuracy.
Meanwhile, Vodafone, in collaboration with Nokia and local system integrator Smart Mobile Labs, has announced that its private 5G Edge system will be available on compact car transport trailers for the construction industry to deploy and redeploy temporary connectivity on construction sites. We have separately announced a project to be bundled with “. He also deployed a private 5G network for the pharmaceutical company Bayer, which covered his 11,000 square meter “greenhouse” research facility in Monheim, Westphalia.
These recent announcements follow an agreement earlier this year with the University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH) in Kiel on the Baltic coast to provide a range of IoT and AI diagnostics for remote medical monitoring. The idea was to establish a private 5G testbed to develop solutions. And he is working with BASF to run a 12-month private 5G testbed at the German chemical company’s production site in Lausitz, between Germany and Poland.
The new HAIP test project with BMW aims to automate production and improve quality at the German carmaker’s Leipzig plant. Vodafone said it is focusing on two areas in particular: a gathering hall and a logistics center, each measuring approximately 4,500 square meters. BMW’s Leipzig plant has 5,300 employees and produces around 1,000 vehicles per day.
As of a few years ago, Deutsche Telekom had installed a dual-slice private LTE “campus network” on-site, separate from the public LTE network, with network equipment provided by Ericsson. We also do different projects with different providers at other factories. In July, it installed a 600,000 euro private 5G system at its training center in Dingolfing, Bavaria, and announced that NTT would provide support. Dingolfing is the company’s other major smart factory accelerator site.
A statement from Vodafone Germany said: “For the first time, a new type of high-precision 5G positioning system is being used under real conditions… 5G positioning… could become the most important positioning system for centimeter-accurate positioning in the future.” Calculated in real time using time and angle based measurements. [so] Locate any object with high precision, even in indoor systems.
It added: “In a pilot project… unmanned transport vehicles.” [carrying] Pallets loaded with auto parts and high-quality tools will be equipped with 5G technology. However, positioning technology also promises to improve safety and ergonomics in the daily work of factory workers in the future. ”
Alexander Saul, Managing Director, Corporate Customers, Vodafone Germany, comments: Real-time location technology will play a key role in the “smart factories” of the future. They allow you to precisely locate networked materials, tools, machinery, and vehicles. The next step will be to be able to interact with the environment in real time via the 5G network. ”
Martin Beltrop, Head of Enterprise Portfolio Management at Nokia, said: In industrial environments, it is difficult to determine the exact location of objects due to the different environments. 5G antennas must be precisely aligned. We will use these discoveries to further develop the technology and commercialize it in future 5G campus networks and future industrial devices. ”
