5G’s role in the adoption of enterprise augmented reality

Augmented reality (AR) insights

• 5G was seen as a key enabler of digital transformation in enterprises and of the overall Industry 4.0 paradigm, but 5G-enabled Industry 4.0 was in its early stage of development. There was time for a digital transformation strategy tuned also around 5G-augmented reality (AR).
• The community should continue the effort in educating enterprises in the value and the benefits that AR can bring within digital transformation strategies. There was an absolute need to empower and diffuse the culture of enterprise AR.

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Since the first deployments of 5G networks, AR has had, and will continue to be, an important chapter in the book of 5G-enabled applications. Certainly, the common perception has been to associate AR to entertainment and media applications, but beyond that easy hype, AR has always had strong potential enterprises looking to improve their performance and efficiencies. 5G is enhancing that, providing the necessary infrastructure for exploring AR-based enterprise applications not possible before.

This is based on a research on the convergence between 5G and AR conducted by the Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA) in 2021.The article examines how the enterprise AR ecosystem perceives the coming of 5G, which enterprise AR solutions can be developed using 5G deployments, what are the difficulties in achieving, and what are the benefits. The analysis is based on a collection of enterprise 5G deployments, covering the period 2017-2021. The overall result shows that the development of 5G-based enterprise AR applications were in an early stage of development in 2021, but there are promising use cases that showed the potential of 5G in driving adoption of enterprise AR applications in various sectors, particularly in manufacturing.

The move towards 5G era in mobile communications could create the conditions for a new set of use cases and enhance the sophistication of several others that are suffering by limitations of existing telecommunications networks such as high latency, low bandwidth, and data rates. 5G will not only break existing performance barriers, but it will enable new applications and new business models in a variety of business environments.

AR has evolved dramatically during this decade with advancements in computer graphics, computing, sensing, and hardware solutions. Certainly, those advancements have showed the potential of AR-based solutions in enterprise. However, technological limitations – among others – have restricted the AR ecosystem to show the entire potential of AR-based solutions for enterprises. This research wants to explore if 5G represents the opportunity for the AR community to break those limitations and develop advanced AR solutions for enterprises thus becoming a useful and critical part of the future of work.

The key research question of the research is: if, how, under which conditions, and when 5G will drive innovation and adoption of enterprise AR applications?

How does the enterprise AR community engage with 5G?

There is a vast academic and business literature on the impact 5G on enterprises[1]. The literature on enterprise AR within Industry 4.0 framework is growing and looking at the role of 5G in enabling enterprise AR applications[2]. Based on that literature, the research team run a survey with the AREA members to assess their level of engagement with 5G. The survey was run during May 2021. 36 AREA members completed the task. Some relevant questions are discussed in this section.

Are you currently researching, testing, or running PoC on 5G-enabled AR solutions for enterprises in the manufacturing/industrial sector?

61% of the respondents were involved in some form in 5G-enabled AR activities.

What enterprise use cases are you currently testing with 5G?

Figure 1 shows the type of use cases tested by AREA members. 9 AREA members are working on remote maintenance projects, 7 on collaboration, 6 on maintenance, and then others. The project area of maintenance appears more relevant than other use cases.

Why are you not involved in 5G-related AR projects?

Figure 2 shows the reasons for not being involved in 5G-related projects. The large majority claimed to work with Wi-Fi and locally tethered devices. A combined 15% argued that 5G is not an immediate opportunity because it is in its early stage of development and, therefore, the benefits are not clear.

How would you describe your knowledge of 5G?

如图3所示,53%的受访者证明d a basic knowledge on 5G. They understood the benefits from a telecommunications network point of view. Almost 38% of the respondents had an operational knowledge of 5G-enabled AR applications. That had different levels of sophistication. For example, only 9% of the respondents claimed to have a full understanding of the potential of 5G for AR because they are actively involved in 5G-related AR projects.

Is it essential to design 5G enabled AR devices specific to industry use cases?

Question 5 looks at the future of 5G and AR asking the respondents if there is the need to design 5G-enabled AR devices specific for enterprise use cases. As shown in Figure 4, most of the respondents believed that is necessary. It is interesting to notice that there was one respondent arguing categorically the contrary.

Will 5G enabled AR will change the way I do my business?

72% of the respondents believe that 5G-enabled AR will change their way of doing business in the future as shown in Figure 5. Three respondents disagreed on that statement.

When do you think 5G AR devices will be used by most industrial enterprises?

41% of the respondents believed that the AREA community should pay attention on the evolution of 5G because its impact on AR and enterprises will happen in the next 2 years, maximum. Instead, 53% of the respondents believed that there is more time to adjust to the changes 5G will bring, believing that the impact will start becoming relevant in 3 years’ time, evolving during a period that goes until 2028-2029.

The results of the survey give a picture of the enterprise AR community divided into two groups. The first group that is observing the evolutions of 5G and its potential implications in AR without planned and strategic actions. The second group, smaller than the previous one, is involved in 5G-based projects in different modes and intensity. The next part of the paper will dive into those projects and the companies involved in, particularly the enterprise AR companies.

5G-enabled enterprise AR use cases

This chapter highlights the trends of 5G enabled AR for enterprises and illustrates three case studies to draw useful lessons for AREA members. The research team created a database of 5G-based enterprise projects publicly launched during the period 2017-2021. The database was composed of 165 projects. The development or testing of AR-based enterprise solutions was decelerated in 48 projects (29% of the total). Exhibit 7 shows the type of use cases present in those 48 projects.

这些用例48,一些没有specify for what purpose AR is being used. However, many tested multiple use cases. The most cited AR use case was to remotely operate machinery or equipment, testing the 5G capabilities of speed, capacity, and latency. This preference for AR supported remote operations and maintenance is not surprising as it is in line with the results of the survey conducted with AREA members.

What is perhaps surprising is that the explicit mention of combining AR and digital twin overlays was not as common as remote operations. For example, for every enterprise who is testing digital twin with AR, there are 3.7 who are testing for AR enabled remote operations. To smart manufacturing enterprises, the ratio is 1 to every 4. This gap reflects a reality that enterprises, especially those in the smart manufacturing segment, have not yet advanced in their trials to combine big data sets and AR.

Said that, the status of those projects also reflects that enterprises are at the beginning of their journey in 5G-enabled enterprise AR solutions. Figure 8 shows the status of the projects.

More than 70% of the projects were in pre-pilot phase, therefore, in a status of research. That degree of development was also reflected in what types of 5G deployments were used in the case of AR solutions. Figure 9 show the deployment methods explored in enterprise AR applications.

The most common configuration and, not surprisingly, were 5G private networks and MEC. As many smart manufacturing enterprises indicated that they are testing both 5G private networks and MEC unlike the trend seen across all vertical industries. This reflected some degree of curiosity among smart manufacturing enterprises as to how 5G is truly transformational for AR experience together with MEC in an industrial setting.

The following three case studies provide more insights on how companies are approaching the development and use of 5G-based enterprise AR applications.

5G-enabled AR adoption case study 1: Haier’s multiyear journey

Haier is a home appliance and consumer electronics company based in China and prides itself to be a world-renowned brand in China and globally . As is fitting to a manufacturing market leader, Haier started their digital transformation journey as early as 2017. They created COSMOPlat, an industrial internet platform to digitalize all factory processes including supply chain and logistics workflows. By February 2021, Haier has deepened their digitalization efforts by leverage complementary technologies such as AI, IoT, big data analytics, and 3D printing in 2018, AI and 5G in 2019, AI, 5G and MEC in 2020. Haier fully commits to 5G MEC and is now figuring out how to further optimize their business operations.

Source:Haier Unveils 5G-Empowered COSMOPlat at Hannover Messe, Illuminating the Future of the Industrial Internet

最重要的教训是海尔的经验y led all efforts from the start, pushing its operators, infrastructure vendors alike to iteratively test 5G technical expertise aligned to operational needs. This reinforces the view that everyone is on a learning curve. As they started on the journey pre 5G standards, they have technical and basic business templates on the requirements to test 5G-enabled AR use cases. These should be made available to others to as to shrink development time.

5G-enabled AR adoption case study 2: Mazak’s proof point for 5G [4]

Yamazaki Mazak is one of several test use case conducted under the umbrella of Worcestershire 5G Consortium between 2018 and 2020. They are testing the use of 5G to facilitate interactions during live streaming and communications between an expert and the remote field engineer.

Source:Yamazaki Mazak Case Study – West Midlands 5G (wm5g.org.uk)

The key lesson from this case study is that the proof point to why we need 5G, specifically the full 5G capabilities in the form of 5G SA, is necessary to meet the baseline experience of 5G-enabled AR. This proof point is based on technical performance relative to 4G, 4G private networks, WiFi and 5G private networks. There is a need for the next releases of 3GPP to change the minds of not only the users but also C-level executives for releasing the investment. Waiting for the next releases also means there is a limit to the time in which the equipment will be ready, but AREA members should use this period to start educating enterprises, and the related ecosystem partners.

5 g AR采用案例研究3:三星选举ronics and mmWave in the US

三星电子(Samsung Electronics)和美国电话电报公司共同经营的发展ration centre in the former’s facilities to provide live experience of various 5G application, including robotics, IoT and mixed reality for training purposes. What is different in this case study is the local conditions in which 5G will be deployed in the US. The more common 5G flavor in the US is mmWave, which runs on the high bands of 24.6GHz and above. This type of mmWave spectrum is currently released in the US but also in a selected number of countries such as Italy, Finland, Japan and South Korea.

Source:Samsung and AT&T Create America’s First 5G Manufacturing “Innovation Zone” – Samsung Global Newsroom

The key lesson from this case study is to highlight the importance of local conditions, with the simplest change being spectrum frequency. As mmWave spectrum is still being considered for allocation in the rest of the world, there is a need to ensure 5G-enabled AR use cases are conducted in localized areas because of spectrum availability. This reinforces the view that AREA members should engage with local companies, especially local testbeds, to be involved in the start of this journey.

Conclusions and lessons learned

The combined results of survey analysis and assessment of 5G-based enterprise AR projects provided some relevant insights for the enterprise AR community. Those results were discussed during a follow up webinar with the AREA members. This section will summarise some of those insights and ideas.

The overall insights of the research can be encapsulated in the following 5 points:

1. 5G was seen as a key enabler of digital transformation in enterprises and of the overall Industry 4.0 paradigm.

2. However, 5G-enabled Industry 4.0 was in its early stage of development. There was time for a digital transformation strategy tuned also around 5G-AR.

3. AR within Industry 4.0 was not a unique priority and/or standalone technology for use cases. AR was part of a wider technology paradigm for Industry 4.0. The AR community should reflect on that, thinking at the convergence of AR with other Industry 4.0 enabling technologies.

4. The community should continue the effort in educating enterprises in the value and the benefits that AR can bring within digital transformation strategies. There was an absolute need to empower and diffuse the culture of enterprise AR.

5. There were some organizations outside the typical AR community that strongly believe in AR. Those should have become AR champions in enterprises.

The world of 5G in enterprises is moving rapidly enabling further sophistication in the Industry 4.0 paradigm. The enterprise AR community is increasingly part of it, but more can be done.

– Industry IoT Consortium (IIC) is a CFE Media and Technology content partner. Edited by Chris Vavra, web content manager,Control Engineering, CFE Media and Technology,cvavra@cfemedia.com.

References

[1] MIT Technology Review Insights. 2020. 5G and the enterprise opportunity. Content sponsored by Ericsson (5G and the enterprise opportunity | MIT Technology Review)

[2] Tariq Masood and Johannes Egger. 2019. Augmented Reality in support of Industry 4.0 – Implementation challenges and success factors.Robotics and Computer Integration Manufacturing, 58.

[3] AREA 5G and AR research database.

[4] Case studyhttps://www.wlep.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/W5G-Final-Report-Public-Release-1.pdf

Original content can be found atPlant Engineering.

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