6G enabled Network Applications for the Future of Connected Robotics
Wednesday, 7 June 2023, 11:00-12:30, Room H1
Session Chair:
- Dayou Li (University of Bedfordshire, UK)
- Nancy Alonistioti (one6G Association, NKUA , GR)
A future is envisioned where 6G will allow to unleash the potential of smart connectivity for a secure, resilient and sustainable development of our society. We believe robotics will be the new blue ocean that will be empowered by 6G. Robots with different appearances, optimized for different tasks, are able to work in groups and able to interact with people in all areas of life e.g. at care at home, delivery services, in both public spaces as well as indoor environment. To successfully support the foreseen demand of robotics applications in different scenarios, mobile communication systems must be capable of supporting stringent performance requirements, ensure required service availability at anytime and anywhere, provide highly accurate environment awareness, support highly dynamic Quality of Service (QoS) mechanism to ensure safety when in close proximity with humans, and enhance sensing capability to aid robot operation efficiency, etc. Apart from enhancing communication system performance, developing robotics systems with much higher-degree of programmability and context awareness by exploiting capabilities such as cloud-native and AI technologies is required to help develop cost-effective and lean robots that are able to operate in diverse scenarios. The future of connected Robotics should be skilful in maximising Quality of Experience (QoE) for its vertical users rather than solely reacting to QoS. Therefore, the Network Applications for the future of connected robotics focus on a user-centric paradigm of integrating vertical knowledge into the existing standardised network and communication systems to improve QoE for the connected robots as their digital skills. The session is designed to discuss and promote digital skills and the trustworthiness of Network Applications that need to be implemented for connected robots by steering digital transitions through human-centred technologies and innovations. Furthermore, the session will include lessons learned from various use cases applied across various vertical sectors and the required physical and virtualised infrastructure to provide the necessary QoS and QoE. The session will also discuss how scaling up mobile communication technology enhanced robot deployment in broader domains is feasible via seamlessly integrating network and communication concepts into native robot design and how various communities work together to develop these novel solutions. Another important aspect that will be discussed is how the development of solutions developed as part of enhanced and connected Robotics can be integrated into the market and what the benefit is for 3rd party users in accessing such resources to develop or new products as well as what consumers can expect in the immediate future and how this will impact society. This special session is endorsed by one6G association, NetworldEurope Vertical WG and H2020 5G enhanced robot autonomy research project.
Programme
The proposed Special Session covers topics such as cloud-native applications, 5G and 6G-enabled communication between robots and cloud-native applications, orchestration of such applications and others.
The session proposed will be structured based on the following pillars:
Welcome and opening (10 mins)
- by Nancy Alonistioti, one6G Chairwoman & Prof. Maziar Nekovee (Chair of NetworldEurope Vertical WG)
- by Prof. Renxi Qiu, scientific coordinator of 5G enhanced robot autonomy research project & the co-chair of the 5G-PPP Software Networks Working Group, Mr. Marius Iordache.
Pillar 1: Advanced mobile communication technologies for Connected Robotics: Telecom industry view (30 mins)
- A joint presentation by Mrs. Christina Lessi (OTE, Greece), Dr. George Agapiou (WINGS, Greece), Dr. Lanfranco Zanzi / Dr. Xi Li (NECLAB, Germany) on 5G network infrastructure and enhanced enablers for robotic applications (15 mins).
- Josef Eichinger (one6G WG4 Chair) for presenting the 6G robotic testbeds & pilots (15 mins).
Pillar 2: Network applications for Connected Robotics: end-user perspectives and emerging use cases (30 mins)
- Presentation from Dr. Vittorio Solina (Cal-Tek Manufacturing, Italy), Guillem Garí (RobotNik Automation SLL) and Dr. Matúš Kašuba (BringAuto, Czech Republic) applications of 5G-enabled autonomous robots in the manufacturing, transport, logistics and PPDR sectors respectively (10 mins).
- Presentation: “Communication framework for 5G-enabled Network Applications” by Michal Kapinus (Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic) (5 mins).
- Presentation: “Cloud-native network application for real-time collision avoidance tasks” by Roman Juranek (Cognitechna s.r.o, Czech Republic) covering a case study of technologies developed, namely middleware and reference framework for the development of Network Applications. (5 mins).
- Presentation: “Network Applications Using PaaS to integrate 5G Technologies with Robotics” by Bartosz Bratus (University of Bedfordshire, UK) about the development of a robotic Platform as a Service (PaaS) paradigm that facilitates the management process of the 5G enhanced robot services. (5 mins).
- Presentation: “Implementation Challenges of Single-Hop, Device-To-Device Communication in 5G Networks” by Dr. Loizos Christofi (eBOS, Cyprus) (5 mins).
Pillar 3: Official launch of the 5G-ERA Network Application for the robots’ community (ROS) (10 mins)
- Presentation by Prof. Renxi Qiu and Mr. Adrián Lendínez on integrating Network Applications with Robotics via ROS (5 mins)
- Presentation: “Business opportunities arising from the connected robotics and the standardization potential” by Dr. Andreas Gavrielides (eBOS, Cyprus) (5 mins).
Pillar 4: Conclusion and future vision (10 mins)
- Discussion remarks moderated by Dr. Andreas Gavrielides and Dr. Xueli An.
This will bring the total time of the session to 1h30.
As part of the project’s commitment to the special session, the following papers have been prepared and submitted to the 2023 EuCNC & 6G Summit:
Full papers:
- Alessio Baratta, Antonio Cimino, Maria Grazia Gnoni, Letizia Nicoletti and Vittorio Solina, “Human Robot Collaboration: An Assessment and Optimization Methodology Based on Dynamic Data Exchange” under the track AIU – Applications, IoT, Use cases.
Short Papers
- Roman Juránek, Petr Klepárník, Michal Kapinus and Pavel Smrž “Real-time computer vision tasks as a Network Applications in 5G-enhanced environment” under the track 6VS – 6G Visions and Sustainability
- Zdeněk Materna, Michal Kapinus, Petr Dobeš and Pavel Smrž “Communication framework for 5G-enabled Network Applications” under the track AIU – Applications, IoT, Use cases.
- Bartosz Bratus, Renxi Qiu, Radu Popescu, Diwali Diwali and Adrián Lendínez Ibáñez “Network Applications Using PaaS to integrate 5G Technologies with Robotics”.
