5G Will Truly Revolutionize Industry 4.0

Bosch and network equipment companies such as Nokia developed 5G-based communications for collaborative robotics that empowers both workers to control the robots, as well as robot-to-robot communications. 5G networks will have latencies as low as 1 ms and multi Gbps speeds in friendly environments, while reaching 100+ Mbps speeds even in harsh factory environments. This means that workers with wireless controllers will have the ability to stop and re-direct robots instantly. Beyond that, wireless industry cameras and machine vision running over 5G give robots the gift of “sight” to “see” when something has gone wrong and “talk” to each other to adapt and fix problems.

The ability to stop and re-direct robots in real time means shop-floor workers can prevent accidents. Accidents cause unnecessary downtime and sometimes serious injuries, both of which can cost manufacturers thousands of dollars per minute in terms of production loss. Once manufacturers can implement the wireless industry cameras with machine vision, the robots will hardly even need the controllers. They will correct themselves and each other when problems arise and work together to execute jobs as quickly as possible as part of automated systems.

5G may need the Internet of Things (IoT) more than the IoT actually needs 5G for most use cases and verticals, but the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) could measurably benefit from 5G capabilities if CTOs and CIOs of manufacturing firms work together to implement applications that maximize return on investment (ROI). Certain organizational structures can actually help the implementation and integration of these technologies into current processes. Creating a Chief Internet of Things Officer (CIoTO) role, for example, could improve management of IT/OT convergence. An executive devoted to strategically implementing and integrating IIoT applications could maximize the impact of these investments.

Already, solutions exist that use edge computing and machine learning to instantly diagnose issues, predict part failures, and manage maintenance schedules. To take the next steps in smart manufacturing, manufacturers need more accurate and up-to-date digital twins, faster and cheaper cloud computing, instant actionable insights, and automated closed loop systems that can learn from new information and optimize operations. 5G makes these next steps possible.

5G will provide enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine type communications (mMTC), and ultra-reliable low-latency (uRLL). These three together with mobile edge computing (MEC) and network slicing will transmit immense amounts of data securely and privately between machines and to the cloud for processing with latencies as low as 1 ms. This speed and capacity will finally make large-scale implementations of collaborative robots, digital twins, and predictive maintenance tenable.