Telefónica demos edge-5G, digital twins and blockchain for smart factories, farms
MWC, Barcelona: Spanish telco Telefónica has unveiled a 5G-connected digital twin designed to optimize quality in the production of industrial parts. The digital twin also has the capacity to make decisions in real time, it says.
Telefónica’s digital twin features a KR4 robot arm, manufactured by automation solutions company KUKA, which simulates the construction of an industrial part and moves in time with a digital representation of both the robot arm and the part.
The demo at MWC, under the title ‘Making Smart Industry happen’, recreates the industrial process, running simulations to make the production process more efficient by also detecting possible errors in the production of parts.
The firm said digital twins help companies reduce the risks associated with production and optimize the use of resources to achieve greater profitability, while contributing to increased efficiency and energy savings.
Leonor Ostos, chief innovation officer at Telefónica, said: “The digital twin is aimed at improving organizations’ real-time decision-making. The union of the digital and physical worlds of factories requires significant technological development – [with] 5G, edge computing, data analytics and machine learning – and allows companies to increase the accuracy of their industrial processes, reduce production time and achieve high quality speeds.”
Jordi Carafi, head of the sales support team at Kuka, said that processes in modern factories present major challenges in managing a large number of product batches. “These trends require maximum flexibility and reaction speed from robotic systems. In this context, 5G offers excellent bandwidth and high reliability, an essential value especially in the most demanding productions,” he said.
Telefónica also demonstrated 5G-supported automation of a vineyard in Galicia. The demo includes solutions for precision agriculture, smart irrigation management, plus traceability of production process and product origin via Blockchain.
The MWC setup shows how to remotely monitor climate and soil conditions in the vineyard, and demonstrates a range of management functions on cloud platforms. A range of NB-IoT applications on display at the stand at MWC include for monitoring climate and soil conditions, remote control of irrigation, disease prevention and agronomic decision making.
