SmarT mObility, media and e-health for toURists and citizenS

Project Information

5G-TOURS

Grant agreement ID: 856950

DOI

10.3030/856950

Project closed

EC signature date 29 May 2019

Start date 1 June 2019

End date 31 July 2022

Funded under

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

Total cost

€ 14 700 898,75

EU contribution

€ 14 700 898,75

Coordinated by

ERICSSON TELECOMUNICAZIONI SPA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - 5G-TOURS (SmarT mObility, media and e-health for toURists and citizenS)

Reporting period: 2020-12-01 to 2022-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

5G-TOURS showed the potential of 5G by demonstrating its ability to support multiple verticals revolving around the life in a city. It has focused on improving the citizens’ quality of life as well as the experience of the tourists visiting the city, ultimately making the city more attractive to visit, more efficient in terms of mobility, and safer for everybody. To achieve this vision, the use cases addressed by 5G-TOURS followed three main themes (see Figure 1):
- The touristic city: The visitors of museums and outdoor attractions are provided with 5G-based applications to enhance their experience while visiting the city. This includes: VR/AR applications to complement the physical visit with additional content, robot-assisted services, telepresence to allow for remote visits, and 5G-enabled live events such as concerts.
- The safe city: 5G technology greatly improves the safety in the city by providing means to better assist health-related care in all the phases of an incident, ranging from the health monitoring and early detection, intervention at the ambulance and finally surgery at the wireless operation room in the hospital.
- The mobility-efficient city: Mobility is made more efficient and comfortable, improving navigation systems as well as parking, making traveling more enjoyable with AR/VR services, and improving the efficiency of airports logistics by relying on 5G for their operation.

In order to deploy its use cases, 5G-TOURS developed a comprehensive 5G architecture that incorporates (i) the enabling technologies of the 5G-EVE ICT-17 platform, (ii) fundamental enablers such as broadcast and enhanced orchestration technologies, (iii) novel machine learning functionalities; and (iv) a novel service layer that provides verticals with an interface to automate their service requests. On top of these network-layer innovations, 5G-TOURS also developed a set of vertical solutions and applications enabled by 5G technology that are needed for the envisioned use cases, encompassing: media distribution applications, media production solutions, a connected robot, e-health-related products and mobility platforms. The 5G-TOURS modules are illustrated in Figure 2.
The 5G-TOURS technology was finally validate in large experimental facilities deployed into real world environment such as airports and museum during their opening days, to support the conclusions drawn by the project with hands-on experience.

That is, the conclusions of the project were derived after the 13 use cases were implemented, trialed and validated. The project results showed that the use cases have a high impact for the three types of verticals on the citizens’ quality of experience: users adopted the use cases and appreciated the project innovations. The network innovations were validated against the adopted network architecture, showing its capability to support the required QoS.

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

The work performed and main results achieved by the project are:
- 5G-TOURS has provided a detailed definition of the 13 use cases addressed by the project, identifying the network and application requirements and deriving the implications in terms of network deployment and operation.
- 5G-TOURS has defined novel solutions for AI-based data analytics, enhanced orchestration and broadcast that led to 120 standard contributions (exceeding the original target, especially in 3GPP where the work in SA2 and RAN1 groups have been one of the main external outcomes of the project) and 34 scientific publications.
- The project has completed real-world network deployments in a two-phases approach, that were eventually used by the UC.
- The project has also developed vertical solutions that empowered the use cases, that were integrated with 5G mobile devices, such as a smart phone or a sensor.
- Trials have taken place and results concerning QoS and QoE were collected in order to evaluate and validate each use case. Exemplary use cases operations are shown in Figures 3, 4 and 5.

The results of the project are expected to be used for the foreseeable future to shape the verticals services as well as contribution to future projects within the same spirit.

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)

5G-TOURS use case target the satisfaction of the verticals tenants and the operators’ cost constraints. They incorporated enhanced functions on top of baseline products: (i) novel service layer, (ii) novel AI/ML based algorithms for the management of the mobile network, (iii) novel orchestration and elasticity solutions, and (iv) novel broadcast solutions.
Along with the mobile communications products, 5G-TOURS also built prototypes for vertical solutions that set the basis for future commercial products and applications in the following categories: (i) media-and-entertainment applications; (ii) healthcare products and solutions; and (iii) mobility-related applications.
As the ultimate goal of 5G technology should be (i) to improve the citizens’ quality of life when traveling, visiting museums, etc., providing them with better services in hospitals, schools, etc., and (ii) to contribute to building more sustainable and safer cities, the project contributed to the following societal challenges:
- Culture: 5G-TOURS developed 5G AR/VR applications that provide an immersive and interactive means to visit museums and cities, enhancing the cultural experience and thus increase the attractiveness to visitors and tourists.
- Safety: 5G-TOURS addresses emergency threats by improving evacuation strategies in a sensitive location such as an airport.
- Emergency care in rural areas without nearby hospitals through 5G.
- Remote health monitoring of elderly people: Many chronic illnesses of elderly people require frequent hospitalization, that are alleviated by 5G-TOURS with the development of smart health monitoring patches.

Figure 3. Robot’s assisted museum guide.

Figure 4. Monitor inside the Wireless operating room to control the smart glasses stream.

Figure 1. Use cases and verticals addressed by the 5G-TOURS project.

Figure 2. 5G-TOURs generic architectural components.

Figure 5. Apron area with follow-me camera enabled vehicles.