Project description
A 5G vision to advance transportation and logistics services in Europe
Transportation is the movement of goods. Logistics is the management of the transportation of goods from the manufacturer to the end-user. Europe’s transportation and logistics (T&L) sector is one of the main adopters of 5G. However, the successful transfer of 5G-empowered services from pilot stages to production hinges on the availability of flexible and intuitive tools for the design, management and orchestration of the services. The EU-funded VITAL-5G project will create an open, virtual and flexible experimentation facility, comprised of an intelligent virtual platform, three distributed European 5G testbeds and associated vertical infrastructure, to enable the testing and validation of T&L network applications in real-life conditions, using 5G connectivity.
Objective
The VITAL-5G proposal has the vision to advance the offered transport & logistics (T&L) services by engaging significant logistics stakeholders (Sea and River port authorities, road logistics operators, warehouse/hub logistic operators, etc.) as well as innovative SMEs and offering them an open and secure virtualized 5G environment to test, validate and verify their T&L related cutting-edge Network Applications (NetApps). The combination of advanced 5G testbeds (offered through participating MNOs / vendors) with vertical specialized facilities and infrastructure (offered by participating key logistics stakeholders) through an open service validation platform (repurposed and created by the project) will create a unique opportunity for third parties such as SMEs to validate their T&L related solutions and services utilizing real-life resources and facilities, otherwise unavailable to them. The platform will provide to 3rd party experimenters, the necessary testing and validation tools, offering them a trusted and secure service execution environment under realistic conditions that supports multi tenancy. Such an elaborate validation mechanism will allow for the further refinement and fine-tuning of the provided services fostering the creation of new services and the evolution of existing ones, while boosting the SME presence in the emerging 5G-driven logistics ecosystem.
The VITAL-5G proposal plans to showcase the added-value of 5G connectivity for the European T&L sector by adopting a multi-modal approach containing major logistics hubs for freight and passengers (sea ports, river ports, warehouse / logistics hubs, highways, etc.) as well as the respective stakeholders (road operators, port authorities, 3rd party logistics (3PL) operators), thus creating an end-to-end chain of connected T&L services accommodating the entire continent.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
IA - Innovation actionCoordinator
171 21 Nea Smyrni
Greece
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.