Verizon Delivers Foundation of Better Wireless Communication for Mobile Robots

Analysis:
In 2020, Verizon incubated a number of robotics-based 5G projects. But in one notable project, a partner company offloaded compute from multiple autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) to the Mobile Edge Compute (MEC), and orchestrated them via centralized, MEC-based microservices. The AMRs relied on a centralized, shared 3D map for navigation and routing, and fed near real-time updates to the map to ensure its accuracy.

As a direct result of the reliability and speed of the network and the accuracy of the map, the company was able to reduce onboard sensors to one single off-the-shelf stereo camera per device, with visual positioning performed on the MEC. The MEC maintained precise knowledge of the autonomous mobile robots’ locations and used complex algorithms and ultra-fast processing to dynamically and safely adjust their routes.

This is just one example of how the speed and stability of 5G connectivity will be able to help AMR companies enhance their capabilities and improve their operations in the future. – Mike Oitzman

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