With its 5G campus networks, Deutsche Telekom now offers an infrastructure for the smart factory of tomorrow. New solutions and opportunities, particularly in production and logistics, are to be created with the partners that have now been introduced.

EK Automation joined the Deutsche Telekom partners back in July. As one of the market leaders in automated guided vehicles (AGVs), EKS worked with Deutsche Telekom in the summer to equip transport robots with 3D cameras. The technicians added 3D obstacle detection with dynamic route planning to the Edge Cloud for the first time. The transport robot sends the images from the 3D cameras to the cloud for analysis almost in real time via the Telekom 5G network. This enabled the vehicle to immediately avoid obstacles in its path.

Konica Minolta is working with Deutsche Telekom to further develop its AIRe Lens. These lightweight augmented reality glasses help fitters to assemble machines, for example. It shows step-by-step instructions on the display. The fitter keeps their hands free. They can also show the situation to an expert at a remote location. A camera is integrated into the glasses for this purpose. In future, the AIRe Lens will deliver data directly via Deutsche Telekom's 5G network.

Endress+Hauser will be one of the first suppliers of measurement and automation technology to equip its sensors with mobile radio modules. Thanks to 5G, numerous measuring devices can transmit a wealth of process and device data in parallel and in real time. This data can be evaluated in cloud applications for predictive maintenance of systems, for example. "Our instruments have long been recording a wealth of information from the process and about the sensor in addition to the actual measured values. However, this data has hardly been used to date," says Matthias Altendorf. The CEO of the Endress+Hauser Group adds: "The 5G campus networks open up a second signal path that is independent of the system control. This allows us to more closely interlink value chains across company boundaries and make industrial processes more efficient."

According to Telekom, other partners are already waiting in the wings.