5G ENHANCED ROBOT AUTONOMY

Project Information

5G-ERA

Grant agreement ID: 101016681

DOI

10.3030/101016681

Project closed

EC signature date 16 December 2020

Start date 1 January 2021

End date 30 June 2024

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 6 029 677,50

EU contribution

€ 4 725 393,00

Coordinated by

ROBOTNIK AUTOMATION SL
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - 5G-ERA (5G ENHANCED ROBOT AUTONOMY)

Reporting period: 2022-07-01 to 2024-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

5G enhanced robot autonomy (5G-ERA) is oriented towards a user-centric paradigm of integrating vertical knowledge into the existing standardized 5G testing framework to improve Quality of Experience (QoE). The project addresses the new challenges on experimental facilities for the vertical developers and designers through the following activities: 1) integrating operational processes of essential autonomous robotic capabilities into Open Source MANO (OSM), ensuring the vertical specific adaptation of existing experimentation facilities, 2) realizing an intent-based networking paradigm by aligning the end-to-end (E2E) resource optimisation with the autonomous operations, ensuring effective policy to be designed 3) Cloud native Network Services (NSs) on the experimental facilities will create, ensuring robotic applications exploiting NFV/SDN infrastructures efficiently, 4) extending the experimentation facilities into robotic domains thorough standard APIs under Robot Operating System (ROS), prompting third-parties’ experimentation activities as well as engagement from new players. The emphasis of 5G-ERA on 5G technologies to produce a solution to the long-standing problem of autonomous robotics, leading diverse applications of robots to particularly the innovative and yet challenging areas such as automated mobility, health and Industry 4.0 and hence contributing to the European economy.

Fundamental to the 5G-ERA is the implementation of a reliable communication layer capable of dealing with collective intelligence, dense data, variety of information and real-time intervention in future autonomous robots. It maps the robotic concept of autonomy into a networking objective of quality of experience. 5G promises to be a key enabler for robotic vertical applications with enhanced autonomy. It will not only deliver an evolution of mobile broadband networks; it will provide the unified communication platform needed to disrupt new business models and to overcome the shortcomings of current communication technologies. As such, 5G technologies have the potential to amplify and accelerate the ongoing transformation, and to unlock a next level of efficiency gains in robotics even for the vast community of European manufacturing SME.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

5G-ERA is a 5G-PPP Phase 3 (part 2) project starting in 2021. It will utilize experiences gained from 5GPPP Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3.1 into innovative vertical solutions. Built on top of ETSI OSM, the 5G-ERA intent-based networking, cloud native reference design and standardized APIs, enable the interoperability and security to be shared by NetApps which follow the reference design across the targeted vertical applications. The capability will be verified in field trials using standardized test beds with NFV. It leads to the latest progress on ML and AI to be used for automatic configuration/decomposition/mapping of NetApps on existing experimental infrastructure. 5G-ERA network applications, including 5G-ERA middleware, reference NetApp, and vertical specific NetApps will be open source to encourage the reusability of project results. Detailed examples with tutorials will be provided to maximum engagement from all players, especially from robotic platform developers and vertical end users.

At the end of the reporting period 1, 5G-ERA middleware has been implemented as a common Kubernetes Network Functions (KNF) to simplify the NetApps’ development and deployment processes. A reference NetApp was released for object detection which are commonly used by the autonomous robots. 5G-ERA paradigm simplifies onboarding and lifecycle management of the NetApps for autonomous robots. Subsequently, it enhances the digital compatibility of the robots on self-deployment and connected intelligence. Furthermore, by decoupling vertical services from the network topology, 5G-ERA quantifies deployment requirements of Robots, Edges and Cloud into a standardized interface.

5G-ERA software has been initially tested in an autonomous robot for 5G enhanced navigation and perception. High flexibility of virtual network functions (VNFs) is initially verified through orchestrated virtual resources as proposed by the project. To disseminate the project results, three workshops on reference NetApp development, cloud native middleware development and cloud-based robot simulation have been organized by the work package for training and dissemination. Video links and training contents are available in the project website and GitHub repository.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Within the project period, four new NetApps which are specifically designed for PPDR, transport, logistical robots (in hospital), and manufacturing process will be validated and showcased in three existing testbeds (Barcelona, Athens and Cambridge), All testbeds were built from previous 5GPP projects and national projects. These NetApp solutions will be sharing 5G-ERA progression on enhanced robot autonomy and representing their respective vertical configurations. The success of 5G-ERA test and validation will open a new window for further development of NetApp in related vertical sectors. In particular, this process will be accelerated in the robotic community by the integration of ROS, which is the most commonly used open-source framework for robot software development.
Built on top of OSM, the 5G-ERA intent-based networking, cloud naive reference design and standardized APIs, enable the interoperability and security to be shared by NetApps which follow the reference design across the targeted vertical applications. The capability will be verified in field trials using standardized testbeds with NFV. It enables the latest progress on ML and AI to be used for automatic configuration/decomposition/mapping of NetApps on existing experimental infrastructure. Performance optimisation will be showcased in different vertical sectors to ensure the repeatability of the project approach.
5G-ERA network applications, including 5G-ERA middleware, reference NetApp, and four specific NetApps per vertical sectors will be open source to encourage the reusability of project results. Detailed examples with tutorials will be provided to maximum engagement from all players, especially from robotic platform developers and vertical end users.
The project partners are carefully selected from the value chain (detailed below) of 5G robotics. Most of the 5G-ERA members are SMEs and start-ups. The project coordinator is Robotnik Automation is a European reference company in mobile service robotics. They are already present in the main international markets. To be successful on the competitive market, the company is keen to seize the new opportunities offered by 5G, especially the 5H enhanced robot autonomy for new products and services.
5G networking promises to be a key enabler for robotic vertical applications with enhanced autonomy. It will not only deliver an evolution of mobile broadband networks; it will provide the unified communication platform needed to disrupt new business models and to overcome the shortcomings of current communication technologies. As such, 5G technologies have the potential to amplify and accelerate the ongoing transformation, and to unlock a next level of efficiency gains in robotics even for the vast community of European manufacturing SME.

5G-ERA robot platforms for NetApps deployment