These days, industrial manufacturing has one motto: moving away from mass production and towards mass customization. One prerequisite for this is the digitalization of the manufacturing industry. In this context, suppliers of production technology have the opportunity to introduce new business models, such as robotics as a service (RaaS). Here, robot control functions are made available via the cloud. Data transmission between the robot and the cloud must meet real-time requirements, meaning that 5G technology can be seen as an integral part of implementing RaaS models.

Memorandum of understanding for cooperation signed

Festo and Huawei are now evaluating whether 5G technology is suitable for robotics in this form. Both parties recently signed a letter of intent for a corresponding 5G cloud robotics project. A mobile robot platform with a robot arm (six degrees of freedom) is being developed. The cloud servers calculate movement paths and control signals and transmit them to the robot platform via 5G slicing technology. The real-time requirements are to be met using uRLLC technology (Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communications).

The advantage of the RaaS approach is a significantly shorter learning curve for robot programming. In addition, some of the hardware for robot control is outsourced from the production robot to the data center. According to the providers' calculations, this would make robot-based production systems significantly more scalable and the capability of the individual robot would no longer depend on its local computing power.

Cooperation to advance 5G in the industry

The Festo-Huawei cooperation is also intended to pave the way for 5G in industrial manufacturing. According to Dirk Pensky, Head of Software Development at Festo, 5G will become the dominant communication technology for intelligent manufacturing "and in this cooperation we are working towards proving this".